NASA's Artemis Program Updates and Discussion Thread 6

[Proponent]

Because there is no natural way to end this, if congress has their way they'd fly SLS to 2100, someone has to force their hand.

I posted this years ago believe it remains apropos (can't find the original post).

[sdsds]

Issacman had a good approach: he didn't talk so much about winning a space race with China, but instead talked (and still talks) about ceding the high ground to China.

In a contested domain the mere appearance of weakness is often a liability. This helps explain why some see advantage in a "big" rocket, even if it is technically less capable than a smaller launch system used with a higher cadence. (For those who doubt this, ask yourself whether Starship really gets more attention because of its amazing catch-and-reuse approach, or because the integrated stack is larger than Saturn V. Hypothetically if RocketLab had been first to successfully implemented catch with Electron that would be cool but would not have garnered the same scale of mass-media attention.)

And yes, pork-barrel spending also helps explain the continued existence of SLS/Orion.

[Jim]

I posted this years ago believe it remains apropos (can't find the original post).

Who made it.  I would like to post this elsewhere and give credit

[pochimax]

Should SLS and Orion be cancelled after Starship demonstrates your >100 tonne to orbit and orbital refueling?

Yes. It is my opinion. At least for SLS.

[VSECOTSPE]

This is sad. NASA and Pentagon have been pushing for alternatives with increasing desperation for the last 15 years at least. It's very hard ti see how they can push any harder.

I’d argue the opposite for both DOD and NASA.

On the military side, just ten (10) years ago, SpaceX was suing the Air Force to open up the EELV program.  And then it was only ULA and SpaceX until earlier this year (IIRC the calendar correctly), when Blue Origin won an NSSL Lane 2 award and a couple Lane 1 contracts were awarded to Rocket Lab and Stoke.  In terms of policy/procurement, the Air Force had to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the ULA monopoly, and only in the last year or two has the Space Force become forward-thinking enough to look past the ULA/SpaceX duopoly.  (I was saying 20 years ago that GPS launches should be reserved for new entrants like Space Force is finally doing with Lane 1, so none of the thinking here is particularly new or radical — just the fact that it’s finally getting implemented.)

The bulk of the funding for these military launchers has come from the private sector, not the federal budget.  Vulcan and New Glenn (and NG’s defunct Omega version of the Stick) each got LSA awards between a half-billion and a billion dollars.  And I think that’s about it.  The reason the Space Force has more than one or two launch options now is not because the military was particularly prescient in developing the industry.  Rather, it’s because the industry has been pursuing the megaconstellation business with the help of private investors and a couple deep pocketed bazillionaires, and those vehicles can obviously launch milsats as well.

On the NASA side, the vast bulk of the space transportation money has gone to Orion/SLS for 15-odd fiscal years, and only now in the FY26 budget is there an effort emerging to fund alternatives for deep space transportation/exploration.  Maybe...

In LEO, like the Air Force on opening up EELV to competition, NASA had to be dragged kicking and screaming on Commercial Crew.  And that program has been half-crippled by I would argue an unhealthy patience with Boeing and Starliner.

Don’t get me wrong.  There are always small ELV procurements and experiments like COTS going on in the background in both military and civil launch.  But in terms of the vehicles that address the bulk of the government’s launches, the nation now has an embarrassment of riches mainly because of market forces and just dumb luck, not because of any enlightened policy/procurement formulation or consistent budget investment over the past decade and a half.  I might go so far as to argue that the US launch sector finally has a relatively healthy set of new entrants and competition despite federal inaction (and hostile actions) over the past 15 years, not because of much of anything positive the federal government actually did.

A truly serious new push now might achieve results in 2035, but probably not.

Even if Trump and Musk never say another word to each other and they never take any actions at their level, there will be unintended consequences below their level from their breakup on Friday.  Organizations and individuals underneath them will try to make assumptions about what the leadership now wants, or react to the implications of what the other leader said on Friday, and act accordingly. 

DOD/NASA and SpaceX will probably pull back from each other at some level, which is to the detriment of both.  Even if no ongoing contracts or activities are curtailed or terminated, it’s hard to see major new awards to SpaceX for some time to come, maybe for the rest of Trump II.  Alternately, SpaceX may decide to rely on its massive StarLink revenue for Mars and stay out of major new government business.  Either way, in NASA’s case, without SpaceX involvement, demonstrable near-term flight progress on the Commercial Moon/Mars line will be nigh impossible to come by.

Another unintended consequence will be the strengthening of the hand of Orion/SLS supporters in Congress.  Other than potential human lunar competition from China, there wasn’t much argument left for keeping Orion/SLS around.  Now there’s Musk’s tweets, especially the threat to decommission Dragon.  People like Griffin and Pace made the argument for decades that NASA needed to continue owning and operating its own human space transport system because private industry could not be trusted.  Musk has now proven those old arguments right, at least rhetorically.  “Can’t trust private industry” will be the other plank besides China used to justify funding Orion/SLS past Artemis III and to maintain funding for Block IB, ML-2, RS-25 production restart, etc.

Many of the quotes in the article above point towards the one unintended silver lining that could come out of this — the recognition by the DOD/NASA rank and file of the importance of industry health and competition.  Friday’s events will probably spur some ad hoc federal efforts to bring along alternatives to SpaceX more rapidly and capably.  And Friday’s events may even force some deeper thinking about the federal role in this sector instead of leaving almost everything up to congressional pork on one side and bazillionaires and megaconstellations on the other.  But as you note, that kind of stuff won’t pay off for some years to come, if it ever does.

FWIW...

[Vultur]

There's a limit to what the government can do to get private companies to do better, though, IMO. I don't think SpaceX is uniquely successful because it got more from the government; I think the reasons are internal/organizational, and there's not really a lot the federal government can do productively about internal company structure and culture.

[Will O Wisp]

Starting with X-33/VentureStar, multiple Administrations decided, tried, and failed to replace the old Space Shuttle technical base, infrastructure, and workforce with something more economical, capable, and flexible.  Some of these failures were due to bad plans.  But most of these failures were just due to a lack of political will.  Each White House had only so much political capital to spend on a low-priority agency like NASA, and when each White House hit tilt on NASA, congressional interest in the Shuttle workforce reasserted itself and funded anything that could keep the Shuttle technical base and infrastructure alive:  unnecessary Shuttle flights beyond ISS Core Complete, a fat Orion capsule and Ares I, and most recently Orion/SLS.

A primary goal of the Space Shuttle itself was to maintain infrastructure/workforce from the Apollo program.  OMB argued that the Shuttle was too big, too expensive and unlikely to meet its program goals. The Nixon Admin overruled them because they were worried about job losses leading up to the 1972 election.

Even before that, a lot of the selections on Apollo were driven by the desire to maintain existing aerospace workforce. A small company, Martin Marietta, proposed an innovative CSM that received the highest rating in design competition. North American Aviatin, a major aerospace contractor which had recently taken a major loss with the cancellation of the F-108 interceptor, placed dead last. The selection rubric was rewritten multiple times until NAA was given the contact. Preventing job losses was probably a factor.

So all in perspective, this has always been the way the way things have worked. An SLS replacement needs to be able to survive in a political environment that is at best dismissive, and occasionally is directly hostile to it. 

[catdlr]

CROSS_POST:

Phillip Sloss' weekly report:


Will Congress choose the Trump/Musk vision for NASA, Artemis?

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=58223.msg2692821#msg2692821

[TheRadicalModerate]

I posted this years ago believe it remains apropos (can't find the original post).

I especially like "MSFC 1701".

Nice to have a little levity amidst the current dreariness.

[Vultur]

An SLS replacement needs to be able to survive in a political environment that is at best dismissive, and occasionally is directly hostile to it.

I think we're just not *quite* there yet. A mature private/commercial system may not need government funding at all; the only government role it needs is the FAA to be willing to issue licenses.

I think SLS is likely to be the last government owned HLV. As long as SpaceX is essentially the only game in town, there remains a strong argument to keep government launch capability. But New Glenn has flown once already, Neutron probably is not too far away, etc.

In say 2030 the picture will probably look very different.

[VSECOTSPE]

Another congressional call to keep Orion/SLS going past Artemis III:

Whitesides suggested it was premature to end SLS and Orion after Artemis 3. “I, personally, am in favor of continuing these things longer,” he said, noting that contractors are working on long-lead items for vehicles well beyond Artemis 3. “I think that work is important. We need to protect the folks who are doing that work.”

He also wants more information about the follow-on commercial architectures for Moon/Mars.  If that information is not forthcoming or deemed inadequate, that can become an excuse, like it was during Obama, not to fund the Commercial Moon/Mars wedge or to redirect that funding elsewhere:

He is also looking for more information about the administration’s plan to shift to commercial replacements “What I think we don’t have right now is, in Congress, a full understanding of these architectures that are being proposed for both lunar and Martian exploration,” he said, adding that he wants to work “towards a fully sustainable long-term human space exploration program.”

Note that Whitesides used to run Virgin Galactic.  Make of that what you will.

https://spacenews.com/whitesides-says-budget-proposal-shows-the-administration-does-not-value-nasa-science/

FWIW…

[Robotbeat]

“We need to protect the folks” is kind of key. There could be a grand bargain that includes transitioning the workforce to doing something more useful than SLS.

[DanClemmensen]

“We need to protect the folks” is kind of key. There could be a grand bargain that includes transitioning the workforce to doing something more useful than SLS.

Yep. Society has a moral obligation to workers in dying industries or who are out of work due to changes in government policy. Sadly, our track record is very poor. Frequently, fiscal conservatives refuse to accept or honor this obligation because it costs too much.

Why are these particular workers more worthy of help than coal miners, folks affected by military base closures, employees laid off because of tariff increases, or federal employees laid off by a meat-axe approach to headcount reduction?

[VSECOTSPE]

To do a “grand bargain” on the old STS workforce and infrastructure, NASA leadership and the Administration have to do some strategic thinking on what capabilities the agency needs going forward and how best to fulfill them.  There are things you might want to keep out of Orion/SLS (LH2 management and storage, maybe LOX/LH2 engines for transit stages) and things NASA should probably get out of the business of except in an oversight or research way (pressure vessels, solid rocket motors, Earth reentry capsules).

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be happening.  So far, instead of thinking proactively about what areas to shed and targeting those with workforce reductions, NASA workforce cuts are all agency-wide voluntary separations and retirements of one flavor or another.  That will create a random, Swiss-cheese effect in the workforce, where there are both holes in critical capabilities that the agency needs going forward, as well as excess capacity in things best procured as industry services.

NASA has not reduced its civil servant workforce since the 1990s.  Much of its contractor infrastructure is also overgrown.  To a certain degree, this is all overdue.  If done right, a healthier, better focused, and more agile NASA would be the result.  But across-the-board reductions is doing it wrong.  It’s just going to create a smaller, sicker NASA.  Given how Trump II is pursuing workforce reductions elsewhere in the federal government and given Administration rhetoric on the federal bureaucracy, that may be the point.

FWIW...

[Vultur]

I am honestly not convinced that *any* parts of the Orion/SLS setup are worth keeping in the long run; LH2 may well ultimately not be worth it for long missions due to storability issues.

But I think that picture will be much clearer in, say, 2030 when we have a better view of how Starship, New Glenn, Neutron, perhaps Stoke's Nova, etc. have developed (and how Artemis II, and hopefully III, have gone).

[thespacecow]

So much for the theory "If only we elect folks who understand spaceflight, Congress would be less likely to hold back NASA and US space program"... This has not worked, like at all.

Does Whitesides even have SLS/Orion contractors in his district? Not sure why he's doing this.

[VSECOTSPE]

So much for the theory "If only we elect folks who understand spaceflight, Congress would be less likely to hold back NASA and US space program"... This has not worked, like at all.

Does Whitesides even have SLS/Orion contractors in his district? Not sure why he's doing this.

There could always be some small subcontractor or two, but none that I know of.  LockMart Palmdale (Skunk Works) is in CA District 27, but there’s no Orion work there, AFAIK.

I checked his donations on OpenSecrets and there’s no corporate aerospace donations to Whitesides’ campaign either.  Just some very small aerospace-related labor unions that probably don’t add up to more than $20K out of $5M+ in donations.

It is curious that someone who led a commercial human spaceflight and RLV startup (even a suborbital one) would argue for extending Orion/SLS.

It may just be reflexive partisanship — the White House has proposed terminating Orion/SLS by date certain, and Whitesides is in the opposition party, so he’s going to oppose that termination.

Or Whitesides is suffering from fuzzy thinking.  But he was sharper than that in my (admittedly limited) interactions with him years ago.

Or Whitesides genuinely values those Orion/SLS workers uber alles.  But it would serve their interests better to get them transitioned to other work, rather than keep Orion/SLS on life support until the rug is pulled out from under that workforce.

It sure would be refreshing if there was a congressional discussion on Orion/SLS, Artemis, and NASA that was about more than jobs.

[Robotbeat]

Also got to wonder if his experience with virgin galactic actually made him sort of disillusioned with how efficient NewSpace is compared to the old approach. Virgin Galactic is doing suborbital sub-Karman-Line hops using primitive pressurefed hybrid motors still after literally decades. Not exactly SpaceX level technical efficiency and advancement.

[sdsds]

Regarding the 'death by a thousand cuts' approach, and specifically starting with terminating BOLE, I'm wondering if Northrop Grumman would have a major objection to that at this point. Anduril has now demonstrated higher performance motors using its aluminum-lithium ALITEC (tm) propellant while BOLE still uses "essentially the same propellant formulation” as Shuttle SRBs. In Feb 2024 NG completed its first BOLE segment; have they assembled a complete test motor though? This seems like an obvious program to either kill outright, or at least delay by starting a new procurement competition.

[catdlr]

Phillip Sloss weekly Update:

Will Starship or China land the next people on Moon?

Jun 15, 2025
With all the attention drawn to both the U.S. race with China to land the next people on the Moon and to SpaceX's development of the Starship system to go beyond Earth orbit, it looks like those are the two in the race.  The HLS version of Starship that SpaceX is developing will land the next U.S. astronauts on the Moon, as planned during NASA's Artemis III mission, and China plans to land the first Chinese taikonauts on the Moon in their Lanyue spacecraft.

There are a couple of Artemis news notes in this video, but the focus is on who will win that lunar landing race by the end of the decade.

Imagery is courtesy of NASA and the China Manned Space Agency, except where noted.

Links to social media posts:

https://x.com/CNSpaceflight/status/1933379564383973516
https://x.com/Cosmic_Penguin/status/1913094757506826293
https://x.com/nasagroundsys/status/1932159222730338455
https://x.com/Commercial_Crew/status/1932167094319173712

Links to stories referenced:
https://spacenews.com/chinas-new-rocket-for-crew-and-moon-to-launch-in-2026/
https://english.www.gov.cn/news/202503/03/content_WS67c57e96c6d0868f4e8f041c.html
https://nasawatch.com/news/shrinking-the-nasa-office-of-communications/


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00:00 Intro
00:59 Lunar landing race boils down to Starship vs. China
03:40 China's plans to land taikonauts on the Moon by the end of the decade
05:39 What's left to do to get ready for Artemis III?
12:15 A few other news and notes
12:46 Current status of Artemis II preparations
16:33 Thanks for watching!