NASA's Artemis Program Updates and Discussion Thread 6

[Proponent]

... ingress/egress issues as late as last November due to side hatch design originally based on Apollo 1 (of fire fame)....

[Emphasis added.]

What?!?!  Could you expand on that?

[rliebman]

How can this be given ALL of the investigations and documentation??

[Robotbeat]

If LockMart and Blue together can't change the instrumentation and software for abort conditions, then they have no business launching humans on any platform.

It’s probably not a question of whether it can be done but how long and how much.  Getting two computer systems and a set of sensors that were never designed to work together to reliably make a decision about an impending LV failure and deliver that decision to the LAS with enough fractions of a second head start to avoid an impending fireball is obviously not trivial.  Even if that turned out to be trivial, Orion has had multi-hundred million dollar overruns on flight software ($900M from 2015-2019) and multi-month delays accessing and replacing avionics and power distribution sets (one year for one lousy PDU).  Given all that, I think we’re looking at a couple years of work, minimum, which is probably a couple billion bucks in Orion dollars.

It might be unnecessary but it's not harmful.  They could just leave well enough alone for a mission or two.

I dunno.  The Orion LAS uses ~2500kg of propellant.  I get that ~1250kg of the same propellant going off at the wrong time in the wrong way will almost certainly kill the crew just as well as ~2500kg.  But I’m not sure the NASA safety orgs will agree.  It’s a lot of unneeded energetics in the system.

That assumes Orion doesn’t need to shed weight for its new LV and flight profile.  If it does, then an LAS redesign and abort test may be necessary.

Blue would be buying time to market, and NASA would be buying dissimilar redundancy.

Given how hard, long, and expensive Orion has been to work with, I’m not sure that porting Orion to New Glenn buys Blue Origin time to market vice leveraging New Shepherd and Blue Moon heritage that presumably has a lot of commonality with New Glenn’s systems.  A new LAS for a new capsule might actually take less time than adapting Orion’s LAS to New Glenn.  The “missing” subsystems for a new capsule with New Shepherd/Blue Moon heritage would be the TPS and the life support.  On the former, get whatever the latest PICA is from Ames.  On the latter, I think that between all the existing capsules (Dragon, Starliner, Orion) and commercial stations (including whatever happened to Blue Reef) there should be life support suppliers and components.

Maybe Orion would still beat the clean sheet capsule, but I’m guessing we’re talking by months to a year or so — not years and years of schedule savings.  Same probably goes for the dollars. At which point, just build the new capsule, IMO.

Of course, the other way NASA could go would be to keep SLS/Orion and buy dissimilar redundancy through a SpaceX HLS+D2 transport combo.  Then we'll wait a year or two while the Washington State delegation summons their righteous indignation and gets a secondary contract.

The way to do this is to run a competition for commercial lunar crew transport, as implied by the FY26 PBR before it was abandoned.  Let Blue figure out if Orion buys them anything substantive, let them bring that forward to compete if they think it does, and then let the proposal evaluators and God sort it out.

The wrong way to go about it is to have a NASA Administrator with no aerospace development experience and no Washington experience suggest putting a certain capsule on a certain LV because it might make his political lift a little easier, regardless of whether the combination makes any technical or programmatic sense.  Even supposedly technically astute NASA Administrators like Griffin get this stuff grossly wrong when they dictate or weigh in on solutions in the absence of a proper competition with formal proposals and evaluations.  A flyboy like Isaacman has no business making unsupported development calls.

Again, I’m not trying to throw cold water on anyone’s spreadsheets here.  I’m just saying that in the real world, I’m not sure Isaacman’s intimations about Orion on New Glenn pan out or make sense.  I’d rather he just lobby for and run a good commercial lunar crew transport competition, as unsexy as that might be.

Unlike the last who knows how many times the SLS/Orion dance has been done, both in the political and technical arenas, I don't think anybody's uncertain any more about SLS's eventual fate.

I guess it depends on what you mean by “eventual”, but after the past year, I expect more Orion/SLS extensions to Artemis VI and beyond out of Congress, Isaacman nodding uncritically because “it’s the law” and he has zero political power base to draw on, and no one else in Trump II paying attention because it’s “mission accomplished” if Artemis III goes off in 2028.  With the path we’re on, there’s no real end in sight for SLS yet.

LockMart has an outside chance to come out of the debacle relatively unscathed, but they have to be willing to pry the other contractors' fingers off of the gunwales before they sink the lifeboat.  If they're smart, they already have a plan for the inevitable.  I can't think of a better one that to throw in with Blue.

LockMart doesn’t need to find another ride for Orion when the Coalition for Space Exploration/Bridenstine’s new employers can just keep extending Orion/SLS to Artemis VI+.  That game plan worked great in FY26.  They have every reason to repeat it in FY27.

I’m sure LockMart will pay lip service to putting Orion on New Glenn if Isaacman keeps bringing it up.  But as long as they can end-run him in Congress and the rest of Trump II looks the other way or is asleep at the wheel, they won’t put any real effort into it.  The old primes are out extend Orion/SLS as far as they can and maybe even steal some of the lander business from SpaceX and Blue.

The other possibility is for Blue and LockMart to agree to evolve Orion into a less stupid form.  They could start with Orion as-is, then do a subsequent version that met Blue's orbital as well as cislunar needs, and didn't cost a billion a pop.

Cost always comes down to workforce.  I don’t have a good feel for the Orion workforce numbers, how much is driven by generic bloat versus stupid design choices requiring lots of labor (TPS, avoionics/power accessibility, etc.).  At some point, it makes more sense to just build a better capsule from scratch rather than try to fix Orion.

I'm still unclear on what rights LockMart has to commercialize Orion.  Note that this is different from the OPOC-style commercialization of Orion ops.

I don’t think LockMart has any rights to Orion IP.  I could be wrong, but I think they’d have to approach NASA and get permission.

OPOC is just a production contract that switches from cost-plus to fixed-price after the first six flight articles.  So if I understand correctly, LockMart won’t be in a position to offer NASA a fixed price for Orion until Artemis VIII, forget other customers.

LockMart keeps talking about bringing Orion costs down thru reusability.  I think they’re kidding themselves given the poor accessibility of Orion avionics and power boxes.

If LockMart was serious about bring Orion costs down, they’d be talking about workforce reductions.  That’s what the budget pays for, workforce.  But they’re not talking about that.

And of course there's the ESM of it all.

My impression is that the Europeans want to apply ESM subsystems and production to a cargo lander. Whether they’d be interested in or have the bandwidth to churn out more ESMs is unclear to me.

These are all reasons why Orion must fly on SLS. They are not reasons to keep SLS/Orion. Replace SLS/Orion. Don't try to retain Orion.

I agree.  And it’s not just the cost.  Orion and SLS are both just woefully incapable on flight rate and worse-than-Shuttle-probability accidents waiting to happen.  The sooner Artemis is rid of them, the better. 

Again, folks should have fun their spreadsheets here.  But folks should also keep in mind that there’s a lot Orion showstoppers and considerations not covered by the rocket equation.

If Orion and SLS are to be cancelled after Artemis V, that decision has to be made now.

Like I’ve written here dozens of times before, that decision needed to be made some years ago.  Even bringing a fully operational Starship lunar crew transport capability into Artemis will take at least a couple years between the budget, Congress, procurement, court challenges, and NASA safety.  And if you want a competitor/alternative, they’re going to need at least as long as crew Dragon took (about six years), plus some since they won’t be SpaceX.

There was a glimmer of hope in the FY26 PBR that this Administration would finally bite that bullet.  But between Isaacman’s repeated confirmation testimony, a total lack of attention from anyone else at NASA or the WH on this, and the lack of any mention in the new policy, I think they’re focused on Artemis III in 2028, a surface reactor that will be cancelled by the next Administration, and not much else.  I’m not sure the situation is salvageable if it’s left up to the next Administration to get off Artemis off Orion/SLS.  Given the lead times involved, at some point, a budget crunch or accident cancels Artemis before a future WH fixes it.

I get the impression that Senator Cruz is open to ending SLS and Orion after Artemis V.

From the bill language, which IIRC directed NASA to reuse Orions (whatever that means) after Artemis V, I don’t think that’s his or Congress’s intent.

There's nothing particularly horrid about Orion's CM,

Let’s see... ingress/egress issues as late as last November due to side hatch design originally based on Apollo 1 (of fire fame), repeated Avcoat issues and redesigns with flight performance under the new reentry regime TBD, ECLSS untested in flight before first crew flight, more than 20 power outages during the Artemis I flight and three successive battery redesigns with the latest still unflown, grossly inaccessible avionics and power systems, docking system still in development, etc.

Not the CM, but the erosion on the separation bolts for the SM, Aerojet’s $100M per unit price tag for the AJ10 engines in the SM, etc.

Even if Orion continues to muddle through all this, sometimes programs are just too sick to keep going, and it’s better to terminate and start over someplace else.

FWIW...

Too long, man!

[StraumliBlight]

... ingress/egress issues as late as last November due to side hatch design originally based on Apollo 1 (of fire fame)....

[Emphasis added.]

What?!?!  Could you expand on that?

SFN: Orion hatch ‘blemish’ delays launch day rehearsal for Artemis 2 astronauts [Dec 4]

“Prior to the countdown demonstration test, the agency had planned to conduct a day of launch closeout demonstration. This demonstration was paused when a blemish was found on the crew module thermal barrier, preventing hatch closure until it could be addressed,” the statement read. “A repair was completed on Nov. 18 allowing the closeout demo to successfully complete on Nov. 19. To allow lessons learned from the closeout demo to be incorporated into the planning for the countdown demonstration test, the decision was made to proceed into water servicing next and place the countdown demonstration test after this servicing completes.”

It was not clear from the NASA statement how a ‘blemish’ prevented the closure of the hatch and NASA would not say exactly when the countdown rehearsal will take place.

Also here's an interesting reddit thread about hatch problems.

Design and Test of the Orion Crew Module Side Hatch

After numerous reviews and discussions, it was determined that a highly modified version of the Apollo hatch was best suited for Orion.

[...]

The Artemis 1 mission (which is uncrewed) did not originally include a full fidelity side hatch but rather a structural simulator for the flight. It was decided late in the Artemis 1 design schedule to add a full fidelity side hatch to reduce technical risk prior to Artemis 2 (first crewed mission). This decision accelerated the side hatch schedule by approximately one year which introduced obvious programmatic challenges.

[yg1968]

The way to do this is to run a competition for commercial lunar crew transport, as implied by the FY26 PBR before it was abandoned.  Let Blue figure out if Orion buys them anything substantive, let them bring that forward to compete if they think it does, and then let the proposal evaluators and God sort it out.

The wrong way to go about it is to have a NASA Administrator with no aerospace development experience and no Washington experience suggest putting a certain capsule on a certain LV because it might make his political lift a little easier, regardless of whether the combination makes any technical or programmatic sense.  Even supposedly technically astute NASA Administrators like Griffin get this stuff grossly wrong when they dictate or weigh in on solutions in the absence of a proper competition with formal proposals and evaluations.  A flyboy like Isaacman has no business making unsupported development calls.

Again, I’m not trying to throw cold water on anyone’s spreadsheets here.  I’m just saying that in the real world, I’m not sure Isaacman’s intimations about Orion on New Glenn pan out or make sense.  I’d rather he just lobby for and run a good commercial lunar crew transport competition, as unsexy as that might be.

I don't think that the commercial lunar crew transport has been abandonned. Isaacman has mentioned several times in recent interviews that a more sustainable alternative to SLS and Orion is necessary. I do expect this to be part of the FY27 Budget once more.

The idea of putting Orion on a New Glenn rocket in the Athena project document was just an idea to be explored, it wasn't offered as a solution that is ready to be implemented now. LM itself has suggested that Orion could be launched on a different LV than SLS, so it would be up to them to find a LV that can carry Orion and then hopefully submit it as a bid as part of a commercial lunar crew transport program.

From the bill language, which IIRC directed NASA to reuse Orions (whatever that means) after Artemis V, I don’t think that’s his or Congress’s intent.

The bill says for Artemis missions after Artemis IV, so I am not sure that this language is problematic by itself (plus the language could be changed in another appropriations bill if necessary).

‘‘(4) $20,000,000 for expenses related to the
17 continued procurement of the multi-purpose crew ve
18 hicle described in section 303 of the National Aero-
19 nautics and Space Administration Authorization Act
20 of 2010 (42 U.S.C. 18323), known as the ‘Orion’,
21 for use with the Space Launch System on the
22 Artemis IV Mission and reuse in subsequent Artemis
23 Missions, of which not less than $20,000,000 shall
24 be obligated not later than fiscal year 2026

See page 160:
https://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/the_one_big_beautiful_bill_act.pdf

[Proponent]

... ingress/egress issues as late as last November due to side hatch design originally based on Apollo 1 (of fire fame)....

[Emphasis added.]

What?!?!  Could you expand on that?

SFN: Orion hatch ‘blemish’ delays launch day rehearsal for Artemis 2 astronauts [Dec 4]

“Prior to the countdown demonstration test, the agency had planned to conduct a day of launch closeout demonstration. This demonstration was paused when a blemish was found on the crew module thermal barrier, preventing hatch closure until it could be addressed,” the statement read. “A repair was completed on Nov. 18 allowing the closeout demo to successfully complete on Nov. 19. To allow lessons learned from the closeout demo to be incorporated into the planning for the countdown demonstration test, the decision was made to proceed into water servicing next and place the countdown demonstration test after this servicing completes.”

It was not clear from the NASA statement how a ‘blemish’ prevented the closure of the hatch and NASA would not say exactly when the countdown rehearsal will take place.

Also here's an interesting reddit thread about hatch problems.

Design and Test of the Orion Crew Module Side Hatch

After numerous reviews and discussions, it was determined that a highly modified version of the Apollo hatch was best suited for Orion.

[...]

The Artemis 1 mission (which is uncrewed) did not originally include a full fidelity side hatch but rather a structural simulator for the flight. It was decided late in the Artemis 1 design schedule to add a full fidelity side hatch to reduce technical risk prior to Artemis 2 (first crewed mission). This decision accelerated the side hatch schedule by approximately one year which introduced obvious programmatic challenges.

Thanks. What I understand from those references is that Orion's hatch is based on the post-Apollo 1 Apollo hatch. That does not surprise me. What puzzled me was my apparently mistaken impresison that Orion's hatch was based on the pre-Apollo 1 Apollo hatch. But if I've still got it wrong, please say.

[deltaV]

The way to do this is to run a competition for commercial lunar crew transport, as implied by the FY26 PBR before it was abandoned.  Let Blue figure out if Orion buys them anything substantive, let them bring that forward to compete if they think it does, and then let the proposal evaluators and God sort it out.

The wrong way to go about it is to have a NASA Administrator with no aerospace development experience and no Washington experience suggest putting a certain capsule on a certain LV because it might make his political lift a little easier, regardless of whether the combination makes any technical or programmatic sense.  Even supposedly technically astute NASA Administrators like Griffin get this stuff grossly wrong when they dictate or weigh in on solutions in the absence of a proper competition with formal proposals and evaluations.  A flyboy like Isaacman has no business making unsupported development calls.

Again, I’m not trying to throw cold water on anyone’s spreadsheets here.  I’m just saying that in the real world, I’m not sure Isaacman’s intimations about Orion on New Glenn pan out or make sense.  I’d rather he just lobby for and run a good commercial lunar crew transport competition, as unsexy as that might be.

+1

[TheRadicalModerate]

If LockMart and Blue together can't change the instrumentation and software for abort conditions, then they have no business launching humans on any platform.

It’s probably not a question of whether it can be done but how long and how much.  Getting two computer systems and a set of sensors that were never designed to work together to reliably make a decision about an impending LV failure and deliver that decision to the LAS with enough fractions of a second head start to avoid an impending fireball is obviously not trivial.

I assert it's pretty close to trivial.  The interface between the Orion and the launcher is intentionally very, very simple.  New Glenn decides when it's gonna blow up, and signals "you should leave" to the Orion.  Orion does so.

New Glenn's computations will obviously be different from SLS's, as will be the needed warning times, based on the different stages and their energy content.  But that stuff is all subject to a model that NASA's approved, and it's easy for Blue to plug in the right values.

As for Orion, it needs to do almost nothing in this respect, other than read the bug-out flag off of the eensy tiny bus that goes between the vehicles.  Even LockMart can manage that.

I dunno.  The Orion LAS uses ~2500kg of propellant.  I get that ~1250kg of the same propellant going off at the wrong time in the wrong way will almost certainly kill the crew just as well as ~2500kg.  But I’m not sure the NASA safety orgs will agree.  It’s a lot of unneeded energetics in the system.

It's an amount of energetics that NASA has already certified as acceptable for Orion on SLS.  It may be overkill for NG, but it is by definition "safe" (for the SLS/Orion value of "safe").  Could Orion become safer being launched on NG?  Sure.  Does it have to become safer?  Only if there's major feature creep.

That assumes Orion doesn’t need to shed weight for its new LV and flight profile.  If it does, then an LAS redesign and abort test may be necessary.

Note that we have two potential conops in play here:

1) A vanilla 5x2 NG, nominally 45t to LEO.  It has nowhere near the performance to put an Orion into TLI, so a cislunar transport would be needed.  That's additional complexity, both for Blue and LockMart, because they have to figure out all the RPOD and eyeballs-out stuff.  Doable, but it's work.  (As usual, the Solar Array Wings will be a goat rodeo.)

2) A 9x4 NG, nominally 70t to LEO.  For a 28.2t OSA+SCA+ESM+CM, you can stack a
41.8t CT to do the TLI burn, so it's direct.

Neither of these options requires any mass changes on the Orion stack at all, with the exception of the OSA.  The new adapter would have to be unreasonably large to cause the mass budget to get out of whack.

Given how hard, long, and expensive Orion has been to work with, I’m not sure that porting Orion to New Glenn buys Blue Origin time to market vice leveraging New Shepherd and Blue Moon heritage that presumably has a lot of commonality with New Glenn’s systems.

That's a fair statement.  I'm reasonably confident that Blue can do something cheaper, but I'm not sure about faster.  If the goal is to replace SLS/Orion with a pair of dissimilarly-redundant CCC offerings, faster is a requirement.

I don't expect Orion to hang around for very long.  I do expect that LockMart might get an extra couple of units flown this way, which is probably enough to warrant the investment.  If they can then further work with Blue to put Orion on a diet so it can satisfy Blue's requirements:  well, then, they won't be doing it cost-plus, will they?

FWIW, I don't think anything ports from the New Shepherd capsule.  It's a toy.

A new LAS for a new capsule might actually take less time than adapting Orion’s LAS to New Glenn.

 

See above.  No need for a new LAS.  The old one is already crew-certified.

Maybe Orion would still beat the clean sheet capsule, but I’m guessing we’re talking by months to a year or so — not years and years of schedule savings.  Same probably goes for the dollars. At which point, just build the new capsule, IMO.

I think Orion would beat a Blue cleansheet by 2-3 years.

Of course, the other way NASA could go would be to keep SLS/Orion and buy dissimilar redundancy through a SpaceX HLS+D2 transport combo.  Then we'll wait a year or two while the Washington State delegation summons their righteous indignation and gets a secondary contract.

The way to do this is to run a competition for commercial lunar crew transport, as implied by the FY26 PBR before it was abandoned.  Let Blue figure out if Orion buys them anything substantive, let them bring that forward to compete if they think it does, and then let the proposal evaluators and God sort it out.

I agree with that.  I'm not sure NASA or Congress would.

We're now in our usual, "When will Congress come to its senses, or at least decide that the embarrassment costs more votes that the campaign money gains?" estimate, and the answer is... unknowable, but headed in the right direction.  However, note that there's a middle ground between keeping SLS/Orion forever and cancelling it in favor of two commercial vendors:  they can keep SLS/Orion, but add one commercial vendor.

That would give the incumbents a bit more runway, at half the cadence.  It's a way for everybody to save a bit more face than an outright cancellation.

I’m not trying to throw cold water on anyone’s spreadsheets here.  I’m just saying that in the real world, I’m not sure Isaacman’s intimations about Orion on New Glenn pan out or make sense.  I’d rather he just lobby for and run a good commercial lunar crew transport competition, as unsexy as that might be.

Again, I agree with that.  The question is whether that competition is for one or two contracts.

NB:  I don't think that an Orion/NG system is anywhere near an optimal one.  I'm not even sure if it's better than Blue doing a cleansheet.  But the spreadsheets say it's pretty easy in terms of mass budget.  And I can't overstate the value of giving LockMart a reason to throw Boeing and NorGrumm under the bus.

I guess it depends on what you mean by “eventual”, but after the past year, I expect more Orion/SLS extensions to Artemis VI and beyond out of Congress, Isaacman nodding uncritically because “it’s the law” and he has zero political power base to draw on, and no one else in Trump II paying attention because it’s “mission accomplished” if Artemis III goes off in 2028.  With the path we’re on, there’s no real end in sight for SLS yet.

With the proviso that I appear to be on the upswing in my SLS/Orion cyclothymia, at some point, everybody's gonna realize that "be first back to the Moon" isn't nearly as important as "sustain lunar presence for strategic advantage".  When that happens, SLS/Orion simply can't meet the requirements.  It's too expensive, and its cadence is way too low.

I don't think the national security shop is particularly freaked out about China getting back to the Moon first.  But I'll bet they're freaked out about China having the capability to throw metals and volatiles off of the Moon, without a similar US capability.  When they go public about that, Congress is going to have to listen.

The other thing that has to go into the mix is Elon's newfound interest in the Moon.  SpaceX gets a CCC system almost for free, and they're likely to run commercial missions outside of NASA.  That's a huge embarrassment, mostly for Congress.  (As you've said, Isaacman can say, "Hey, I was just following the law," so he can get them on their back feet.)

Political reality and actual reality can only diverge by so much.  We're due for a regression to the mean.

[VSECOTSPE]

... ingress/egress issues as late as last November due to side hatch design originally based on Apollo 1 (of fire fame)....

[Emphasis added.]

What?!?!  Could you expand on that?

One of the main lessons from the Apollo 1 fire was that the CM has to provide for rapid egress.  The main obstacle to rapid egress was the wait for the internal atmospheric pressure to equalize with the external atmosphere.  With no dedicated mechanism for rapidly equalizing pressure, the wait could be the better part of 90 seconds.  The redesigned hatch got that under 3 seconds with the addition of a valve.  Here’s an old technical memo on how the design of the Apollo CM side hatch changed going from Apollo 1 to later missions.  It mentions, among other changes, the addition of the valve:

The basic procedure for egress [from the CM for Apollo 1, also known as Spacecraft 012] was to:

(1) Equalize the pressure across the inner structure hatch...

...The hatch system was deemed acceptable for early Apollo spacecraft (designated Block I) because there was no firm requirement for extravehicular activity, and a 90-s [90-second] egress time for the three astronauts was thought to be sufficient...

II. New Hatch Design Requirements

... and the requirements for rapid emergency egress during manned command module checkout and prelaunch activities were changed drastically.  Time allowed for opening the side hatch system was cut to 3 s [3 seconds] and time for egress of the three pressure-suited astronauts was reduced to 30 s [30 seconds]...

VI. Unified Hatch Mechanisms

The command module unified hatch [the redesigned hatch after Apollo 1] contains the following mechanical components...

(6) A manually operated valve to equalize pressure across the hatch.

http://www.ninfinger.org/models/vault2012/Apollo%20CM%20Hatch%20Design.pdf

So given this very hard-earned lesson, one would naturally assume that Orion’s side hatch also incorporates a valve or other mechanism for rapid pressure equalization, right?  You know, Apollo-on-Steroids and all that?

Wrong.  From p. 23 in the 2024 IG report on getting Orion ready for Artemis II:

Orion Side Hatch. The Orion Program is working to address a 7-year-long concern related to the Orion side hatch—the primary entry and exit vehicle path for the crew and ground support personnel prior to launch and after landing. The hatch does not meet pressure opening requirements because it does not have a valve to perform pressure equalization, making it difficult to open manually.  [emphasis added]  This is especially concerning should an emergency require a rapid extraction of the crew while on the launch pad or after splashdown. While methods exist to equalize pressure across the hatch prior to opening, there are some limitations. The Agency is planning to test its emergency egress procedures with the crew to identify any additional required mitigations to address this issue. The scheduled completion date is spring 2024.

https://oig.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/ig-24-011.pdf

I don’t know if a valve or other rapid pressurization mechanism has been added.  But just a couple months ago, right before Thanksgiving, the program was still having problems with Orion’s side hatch — this time getting it closed:

https://spaceflightnow.com/2025/12/04/orion-hatch-blemish-delays-launch-day-rehearsal-for-artemis-2-astronauts/

That’s what I meant when I wrote “ingress/egress issues as late as last November due to side hatch design originally based on Apollo 1 (of fire fame).”

My intent is not to be alarmist.  Even this magnitude of stupidity does not guarantee mission failure or crew loss.  But it does not engender confidence, either.  Like I wrote, sometimes programs are so sick, it’s best to walk away and start over someplace else.

FWIW...

[Vultur]

I don't think the national security shop is particularly freaked out about China getting back to the Moon first.  But I'll bet they're freaked out about China having the capability to throw metals and volatiles off of the Moon, without a similar US capability.  When they go public about that, Congress is going to have to listen.

I am extremely skeptical there is any way to get material from the Moon cheaper than launching it from Earth. In a world where space launch is extensive enough to build the lunar extraction, processing, and launch hardware, it's probably also cheap enough for there to be no point. The Moon is a pretty unfriendly environment for long term operations, and your lunar hardware would have to have a long lifetime for there to be any point.

Lunar volatiles make sense as a way to make stuff you're already doing on the Moon (for other reasons) cheaper, but not as a reason to do stuff on the Moon in the first place.

If you want off-Earth-sourced volatiles and metals, the Moon probably isn't the best source. Some near Earth asteroids and Deimos have lower delta v cost since the gravity well is far smaller. And lunar volatiles are stuck in perpetually shaded regions.

[DanClemmensen]

I don't think the national security shop is particularly freaked out about China getting back to the Moon first.  But I'll bet they're freaked out about China having the capability to throw metals and volatiles off of the Moon, without a similar US capability.  When they go public about that, Congress is going to have to listen.

I am extremely skeptical there is any way to get material from the Moon cheaper than launching it from Earth. In a world where space launch is extensive enough to build the lunar extraction, processing, and launch hardware, it's probably also cheap enough for there to be no point. The Moon is a pretty unfriendly environment for long term operations, and your lunar hardware would have to have a long lifetime for there to be any point.

Lunar volatiles make sense as a way to make stuff you're already doing on the Moon (for other reasons) cheaper, but not as a reason to do stuff on the Moon in the first place.

If you want off-Earth-sourced volatiles and metals, the Moon probably isn't the best source. Some near Earth asteroids and Deimos have lower delta v cost since the gravity well is far smaller. And lunar volatiles are stuck in perpetually shaded regions.

Water from Saturn's rings is probably easier. Much worse delta V, but your mass driver is in microgravity already.

[goretexguy]

<... previous discussion redacted ...>

https://oig.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/ig-24-011.pdf

I don’t know if a valve or other rapid pressurization mechanism has been added.  But just a couple months ago, right before Thanksgiving, the program was still having problems with Orion’s side hatch — this time getting it closed:

https://spaceflightnow.com/2025/12/04/orion-hatch-blemish-delays-launch-day-rehearsal-for-artemis-2-astronauts/

That’s what I meant when I wrote “ingress/egress issues as late as last November due to side hatch design originally based on Apollo 1 (of fire fame).”

My intent is not to be alarmist.  Even this magnitude of stupidity does not guarantee mission failure or crew loss.  But it does not engender confidence, either.  Like I wrote, sometimes programs are so sick, it’s best to walk away and start over someplace else.

FWIW...

The SpaceFlightNow article needs to be read carefully. From the article:

"The four astronauts who are to fly a loop around the Moon next year on the Artemis 2 mission were supposed to board their Orion capsule on Nov. 19 for a launch day rehearsal, but a problem with the spacecraft’s hatch delayed the practice run, NASA told Spaceflight Now."

<... several paragraphs ...>

“Prior to the countdown demonstration test, the agency had planned to conduct a day of launch closeout demonstration. This demonstration was paused when a blemish was found on the crew module thermal barrier, preventing hatch closure until it could be addressed,” the statement read. “A repair was completed on Nov. 18 allowing the closeout demo to successfully complete on Nov. 19."

These dates conflict, and my google-fu failed to find any published NASA schedule to lend clarity to the test dates.

Further, I don't think the 'minor blemish' is something to get worried about.

Regarding the blemish that NASA 'declined to comment' on, IMO was a newly discovered scuff or dent in the exterior tiles in the door area (possibly caused by the ingressing astronauts) and the NASA rules were to STOP for evaluation; the test therefore halted at the 'Close the Door' checklist item. Any 'blemish' that physically prevented the capsule door from being closed would require much more than a day to repair. 

UPDATE:
Once again, NSF demonstrates itself as the singular best source of spaceflight information.
For those with L2 access, see this message regarding the hatch issue:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=61238.msg2747483#msg2747483

[Vultur]

I don't think the national security shop is particularly freaked out about China getting back to the Moon first.  But I'll bet they're freaked out about China having the capability to throw metals and volatiles off of the Moon, without a similar US capability.  When they go public about that, Congress is going to have to listen.

I am extremely skeptical there is any way to get material from the Moon cheaper than launching it from Earth. In a world where space launch is extensive enough to build the lunar extraction, processing, and launch hardware, it's probably also cheap enough for there to be no point. The Moon is a pretty unfriendly environment for long term operations, and your lunar hardware would have to have a long lifetime for there to be any point.

Lunar volatiles make sense as a way to make stuff you're already doing on the Moon (for other reasons) cheaper, but not as a reason to do stuff on the Moon in the first place.

If you want off-Earth-sourced volatiles and metals, the Moon probably isn't the best source. Some near Earth asteroids and Deimos have lower delta v cost since the gravity well is far smaller. And lunar volatiles are stuck in perpetually shaded regions.

Water from Saturn's rings is probably easier. Much worse delta V, but your mass driver is in microgravity already.

Can't really use solar power there though. As long as there's water available in the inner system... But the Moon is one of the worst places in the inner system for solar.

[TheRadicalModerate]

Update:  In an effort to keep this from going totally off the rails, my on-topic argument is that any attempt by China to establish a sustainable lunar presence will have national security implications.  We don't need to litigate the entire future history of the space industry to address that point.

I am extremely skeptical there is any way to get material from the Moon cheaper than launching it from Earth. In a world where space launch is extensive enough to build the lunar extraction, processing, and launch hardware, it's probably also cheap enough for there to be no point. The Moon is a pretty unfriendly environment for long term operations, and your lunar hardware would have to have a long lifetime for there to be any point.

Lunar volatiles make sense as a way to make stuff you're already doing on the Moon (for other reasons) cheaper, but not as a reason to do stuff on the Moon in the first place.

If you want off-Earth-sourced volatiles and metals, the Moon probably isn't the best source. Some near Earth asteroids and Deimos have lower delta v cost since the gravity well is far smaller. And lunar volatiles are stuck in perpetually shaded regions.

A few things:

1) There are military implications to having access to off-Earth resources.  If somebody tried to blockade access to LEO (e.g. by shooting down everything that got launched), the way you'd counter that would be to break the blockade from above.  But that requires volatiles resupply.

There's a decent argument to be made that lunar surface resources are too exposed to be relied upon in a conflict, but there are all kinds of situations where you'd rather not start attacking a foreign power's assets until you have to.  If the playing field is level (i.e., if both sides have roughly equal assets), the need to preempt is a lot less urgent.

Military planners are really conservative.  If there's a chance that one side is trying to acquire a capability, they'll want to have the same capability.

2) Stuff launched off of the Moon winds up in cislunar space with virtually no energy, at least relative to the weak stability boundary.  Stuff brought in from a higher-energy interplanetary orbit needs substantial reaction mass to be brought into cislunar space.

NEAs should be fairly similar energy, although they have long synodic periods.  But the Moon is uniquely capable of getting stuff to where it can be used, with a minimum of reaction mass.

3) There's going to be some environmental limit to rocket launches from Earth.  I have no clue if it's at 1000/year or 1,000,000/year, but it's out there somewhere.  Dumping water vapor into the upper stratosphere is going to have an impact.  So will dumping NOx into the lower stratosphere.

4) I think your argument that launching stuff will always be cheaper is nonsense.  Mass drivers and mining ops have a high capital cost, but their operational costs are tiny--much lower than terrestrial rockets.  There will clearly be a point where the capex is worth it.  It's fair to argue that point is way out there.  I would argue that it's not as far out as you think.

Again, if there's even a possibility that one side might develop a sustainable advantage from a lunar capability, the conservative move is going to be to ensure that the other side does the same.

[VSECOTSPE]

Further, I don't think the 'minor blemish' is something to get worried about.

Regarding the blemish that NASA 'declined to comment' on, IMO was a newly discovered scuff or dent in the exterior tiles in the door area (possibly caused by the ingressing astronauts) and the NASA rules were to STOP for evaluation; the test therefore halted at the 'Close the Door' checklist item. Any 'blemish' that physically prevented the capsule door from being closed would require much more than a day to repair.

In isolation, whatever was keeping the side hatch from closing in November is not a showstopper.

What is pretty worrisome is that Orion’s side hatch was built without the rapid egress capability that was built into the redesigned Apollo CM side hatch after the Apollo 1 fire, that this bonkers oversight still had not been addressed after seven years at the time of the IG report above, and that the program in November/December was down to whether or not the astronauts are okay launching without such precautions just a couple/few months from launch.  It’s slipshod and lazy all around on a safety issue that should never be slipshod or lazy.

Again, I’m not trying to be alarmist.  I’m not saying there will be another Apollo 1 fire.  But when I’ve seen stuff like this in other programs and projects, I want nothing to do with them.

FWIW...

[Vultur]

Update:  In an effort to keep this from going totally off the rails, my on-topic argument is that any attempt by China to establish a sustainable lunar presence will have national security implications.  We don't need to litigate the entire future history of the space industry to address that point.

I disagree (I think the Moon has essentially only scientific and PR value, not direct economic or strategic value) mostly because of:

4) I think your argument that launching stuff will always be cheaper is nonsense.  Mass drivers and mining ops have a high capital cost, but their operational costs are tiny--much lower than terrestrial rockets.  There will clearly be a point where the capex is worth it.

This is the part I disagree with, because the Lunar environment is pretty nasty. PSRs are also really really cold; this isn't mining ice as we know it on Earth, more like hard rock. The capital cost vs operational cost argument requires a long life span for the Lunar surface hardware.

And no, I don't think launching from Earth will necessarily always be cheaper. But the Moon probably isn't the best source of off-earth materials. Small bodies don't have 14 day night and their volatiles stuck in colder-than-Pluto environments.

Also, I think the time scale for this kind of thing is way too long for current geopolitical rivalries to be relevant. Neither Artemis as it exists now, nor the Chinese lunar program, is a meaningful step in this direction. To even meaningfully start on stuff like this would *conservatively* be several orders of magnitude beyond current plans, possibly even more.

I am definitely in favor of Lunar exploration and activity, and of a Moonbase (significantly more ambitious than is possible with a program tied ro SLS/Orion's very high cost and very low cadence). But I see a Moonbase as something more on the model of ISS or (optimistically) Antarctic stations - a fundamentally research based endeavor (and a demonstration of capability/geopolitical relevance as well) rather than a colony based on export of physical resources.

What we or China do or don't do on the Moon in the next five years won't matter in the long term. Developing a capability to do lots of things in space will matter - but that kind of capability may not be focused on the Moon.

[jadebenn]

Any 'blemish' that physically prevented the capsule door from being closed would require much more than a day to repair.

In isolation, whatever was keeping the side hatch from closing in November is not a showstopper.

Did I miss a post or something? Where are you getting the idea that the hatch could not be closed? Goretex pointed out the more likely explanation is that they simply aborted the test out of an abundance of caution.

[thespacecow]

I guess it depends on what you mean by “eventual”, but after the past year, I expect more Orion/SLS extensions to Artemis VI and beyond out of Congress, Isaacman nodding uncritically because “it’s the law” and he has zero political power base to draw on, and no one else in Trump II paying attention because it’s “mission accomplished” if Artemis III goes off in 2028.  With the path we’re on, there’s no real end in sight for SLS yet.

With the proviso that I appear to be on the upswing in my SLS/Orion cyclothymia, at some point, everybody's gonna realize that "be first back to the Moon" isn't nearly as important as "sustain lunar presence for strategic advantage".  When that happens, SLS/Orion simply can't meet the requirements.  It's too expensive, and its cadence is way too low.

I don't think the national security shop is particularly freaked out about China getting back to the Moon first.  But I'll bet they're freaked out about China having the capability to throw metals and volatiles off of the Moon, without a similar US capability.  When they go public about that, Congress is going to have to listen.

The other thing that has to go into the mix is Elon's newfound interest in the Moon.  SpaceX gets a CCC system almost for free, and they're likely to run commercial missions outside of NASA.  That's a huge embarrassment, mostly for Congress.  (As you've said, Isaacman can say, "Hey, I was just following the law," so he can get them on their back feet.)

Political reality and actual reality can only diverge by so much.  We're due for a regression to the mean.

Note Congress already laid out conditions for ending SLS/Orion, it's not complicated, just need a commercial system which demonstrate equivalent or better capability. With any luck, SpaceX's faster HLS proposal already covers this, just need Isaacman's approval and for SpaceX to execute, doesn't even need a new program.

[PahTo]

Note Congress already laid out conditions for ending SLS/Orion, it's not complicated, just need a commercial system which demonstrate equivalent or better capability. With any luck, SpaceX's faster HLS proposal already covers this, just need Isaacman's approval and for SpaceX to execute, doesn't even need a new program.

...and hopefully not rain flaming debris on cruise ships in the Carib (or closer)...

[TheRadicalModerate]

Note Congress already laid out conditions for ending SLS/Orion, it's not complicated, just need a commercial system which demonstrate equivalent or better capability. With any luck, SpaceX's faster HLS proposal already covers this, just need Isaacman's approval and for SpaceX to execute, doesn't even need a new program.

That's the committee report.  I'm pretty sure that language didn't make it into the appropriation.  The committee report's not nuthin', but it isn't exactly public law.

I'd say a commercial alternative is a good-sized step closer now than it was before the PBR, but it ain't there yet.  SLS still needs at least one more good shove before it comes toppling down.  But as many here have pointed out, time is of the essence.