NASA HLS (Human Landing System) Lunar Landers

[yg1968]

Will a moon landing remain part of the picture, or not, as you suggest @Woods170? If the Red-China-paranoia argument is what carries the day, I have a hard time believing that it doesn’t.

I don't think that it is paranoia, China has the ambitions for human exploration of the Moon (and Mars) and so should the United States in my opinion. It's a national prestige argument which partly justifies the Moon to Mars program.

America won the race to the Moon over 50 years ago, and the resources of the Moon are only needed if you are doing something significant ON the Moon. Which no government is capable of doing for decades to come.

So for me I don't really care if China attempts to land Chinese citizens on the Moon, since we'll all be watching SpaceX attempting to land humans on Mars by then.

I think it is a valid argument to be made that if the SLS and Orion programs are cancelled, that Congress could just chuck out the return-to-Moon program and have NASA focus on getting to Mars. I have always thought that going to Mars was the next logical step for NASA, not returning to the Moon.

Which means that HLS could be in danger at this moment too...

There is no reason to believe that. Isaacman spoke of the importance of the Moon to Mars program and the Republican platform also speaks of the human exploration of the Moon and Mars. It would be strange for Trump to cancel his own lunar program. It's not going to happen. Having said that, certain elements of Artemis/Moon to Mars program may be terminated in order to fund a commercial crew to the Moon and Mars program. SLS, Orion and Gateway might get cancelled. The LTV might get delayed. I don't expect NASA to fund lunar habitats as that will be left to international partners. I don't think that NASA will choose a new second provider for the spacesuits (to replace Collins).

As far as HLS is concened, I don't think that Options A & B and Appendix P will be cancelled. However, NASA will possibly modify the upcoming HLS Services contract and transform it into a commercial crew to the Moon and Mars program. At least that is what I am hoping for. 

[dglow]

Will a moon landing remain part of the picture, or not, as you suggest @Woods170? If the Red-China-paranoia argument is what carries the day, I have a hard time believing that it doesn’t.

I don't think that it is paranoia, China has the ambitions for human exploration of the Moon (and Mars) and so should the United States in my opinion. It's a national prestige argument which partly justifies the Moon to Mars program.

The paranoia is not my argument. It’s the basis for an argument that I predict will be made, catering to the current political environment.

[VSECOTSPE]

I wasn't aware that Pace was behind the 2024 date. That's news to me. Are you sure about that? I would have expected that date to be more NASA and Jim Bridenstine than the National Space Council and Scott Pace.

Yeah, it was Pence direction to Bridenstine/NASA announced at an NSC meeting (Pace’s forum, not Bridenstine’s), so it came from Pace.  (Pace is also lunar-centric going back to his L5 days, and you can read that position in his policy papers and testimony before he worked Trump I.)  Pence’s speech was really a slap in the face that Pace directed at Bridenstine to wake him up.  This is apparent from how forward-leaning Pence was, how negative Pence was on NASA in it, and how flat-footed Bridenstine’s response was.  Pence argued for an “all hands on-deck approach” and for NASA to “transform itself into a leaner, more accountable and more agile agency.”  Those kinds of statements wouldn’t have been made if the acceleration came from Bridenstine and NASA.  Those were words put in Pence’s mouth by Pace.  And while saluting the acceleration, Bridenstine wasn’t prepared at that meeting, was still defending the Orion/SLS schedule and Gateway, had no plan to implement the new direction, and could only promise the creation of a new mission directorate.  Bridenstine wouldn’t even have the moniker “Artemis” until some days later.

There’s nothing wrong with a White House organ metaphorically slapping the face of an agency head to get them to start paying attention to the most important goals the administration has charged them with.  But you do it behind closed doors — there should have been a come-to-Jesus meeting between Bridenstine and Pence with Pace in the room — and you give the agency head a little time to come back with an implementable plan, and iterate as necessary, before going public with revised policy goals.  Instead, Pace just had Pence announce an accelerated goal, direct some tough words at NASA, and left Bridenstine to pick up the pieces.  That’s not how you do things if you want the result to be an implementable, achievable program.  Since working for Rockwell decades ago, Pace’s career has been in a think tank or ivory tower.  When he came to Trump I, Pace had no practical experience getting things done beyond policy papers, which is apparent from the NSC output during this time.

The outcome could have been very different if, say, Pence/Pace gave Bridenstine a charge to develop a plan for a landing in 2024 to 2026, Bridenstine came back with F9/Centaur but said he’d need WH help with Shelby, and there had been some back and forth on the art of the possible before announcing a date.  Instead, there was some stumbling in public, a hard “no” from Shelby, and an effective abandonment of Bridenstine and the 2024 goal by Pence and the WH shortly thereafter.

In any event, as you've said so yourself before, VP Pence's March 2019 speech which accelerated the target date to 2024 gave the program a well-needed kick in the pants.

It did, but to little end because Pace didn’t do the homework to make sure there was an implementable program to match the date.  Again, we’ve blown past 2024 and even 2028 is in jeopardy.  It’s not enough to announce random dates.  There needs to be programmatic and budgetary homework behind them.  Look at the VSE as another example.  We had program priorities and principles and a multi-year budget laid out right in the document (at least until Griffin reversed them).  There wasn’t even a hint of something like that behind these Trump I dates.

The HLS procurement was initiated in 2019 shortly after Pence's speech.

Which, while great from a space cadet perspective, still didn’t result in an implementable national program.  Artemis still suffers from Orion/SLS technical woes, schedule slips, and costs.  HLS is more than a couple years behind schedule and counting.  Artemis priorities are still clear as mud.  And as a result, Trump II will probably try to redo the program again (before abandoning the effort again, I’m guessing). 

Yeah, it’s great that these random walk events resulted in NASA giving Starship a shot in the arm with HLS.  But like I’ve written here before, SX was sending Starships around the Moon, and Musk was talking about a lunar base before any of this.  We still basically have a dysfunctional national human space exploration program and a promising private effort that may pay off someday.  Nothing substantive has really changed.

If you set a date too far into the future, Congress barely funds it and NASA ends up only studying things which is the surest way to ensure that nothing gets done.

There’s nothing wrong with urgency as long as it’s realistic.  But throwing out dates without doing the homework and not providing the political support necessary to change the problematic program elements just results in more missed milestones.

This is currently the problem for Mars with its 2040 target date. That is one of the reasons why I think that Trump II needs to initiate a commercial crew to Mars program within the next few years and the target date for such a program can't be 2040.

We’re not ready for manned Mars, commercial crew approach or otherwise.  Sadly, despite the gazillions wasted on ISS, we have not done the research to know how to write the requirements without killing astronauts yet.  End of Trump II (2028) for Mars would be even more unrealistic than Moon 2024 was under Trump I.  The best that could be done is an unmanned pathfinder for a human-scale lander.  The announcement yesterday from the science side of the house that they’re going to pursue two paths for an MSR lander will maybe get that done, anyway.

[dglow]

Will a moon landing remain part of the picture, or not, as you suggest @Woods170? If the Red-China-paranoia argument is what carries the day, I have a hard time believing that it doesn’t.

I don't think that it is paranoia, China has the ambitions for human exploration of the Moon (and Mars) and so should the United States in my opinion. It's a national prestige argument which partly justifies the Moon to Mars program.

America won the race to the Moon over 50 years ago, and the resources of the Moon are only needed if you are doing something significant ON the Moon. Which no government is capable of doing for decades to come.

With all due respect @Coastal Ron, the history of exploring and colonizing Terra is ripe with examples of kingdoms and nations laying claim to territories they had no immediate or functional justification for. Some such claims proved quite valuable in the time which followed. I think it no coincidence that leadership in China prides itself on long-term thinking.

So for me I don't really care if China attempts to land Chinese citizens on the Moon, since we'll all be watching SpaceX attempting to land humans on Mars by then.

I think it is a valid argument to be made that if the SLS and Orion programs are cancelled, that Congress could just chuck out the return-to-Moon program and have NASA focus on getting to Mars. I have always thought that going to Mars was the next logical step for NASA, not returning to the Moon.

From a pure move-humanity-forward perspective I’m with you: Mars is the play. But not everyone takes that tack; from a protect-the-homeland and defend-our-interests standpoint one can see how a moon-first agument makes sense.

[VSECOTSPE]

Bill Nelson, for example, knows this all too well. That's why, during his tenure as NASA Administrator, he kept pulling the "China" card, to make damn sure that US Congress keeps pouring sh1tloads of money into continued development of SLS and Orion. Not because the USA "needs" to actually beat China back to the Moon (the USA did that 56 years ago), but to maintain a lot of highly-paid jobs in certain Congressional districts.

I agree that the red scare argument about a Chinese lunar landing circa 2030 is bunk.  If they pull it off, they’ll be on the surface for a handful or two of hours, and then they won’t be back for years after.

But after that initial landing, I do worry about the follow on China manned lunar program and think there is a legitimate argument to be made that the West does not want an increasingly autocratic and revanchist China setting the rules for the Moon and outer space generally because they’re eventually there in a sustained way when the West is not.  It’s a more sophisticated and harder argument to make than “beat China back to the Moon”, but we really need to be setting up Artemis for sustained success at scale.  If China is sending two missions per year in the mid-2030s, we need to be able to send four.  Etc.  That’s the real challenge, IMO, not making 2030 or 2028 or whatever date exactly, which threatens to sacrifice sustainability for a short-term win, like Apollo did.  I don’t expect Trump II to appreciate that kind of nuanced but important argument, but we’ll see.

[dglow]

Bill Nelson, for example, knows this all too well. That's why, during his tenure as NASA Administrator, he kept pulling the "China" card, to make damn sure that US Congress keeps pouring sh1tloads of money into continued development of SLS and Orion. Not because the USA "needs" to actually beat China back to the Moon (the USA did that 56 years ago), but to maintain a lot of highly-paid jobs in certain Congressional districts.

I agree that the red scare argument about a Chinese lunar landing circa 2030 is bunk.  If they pull it off, they’ll be on the surface for a handful or two of hours, and then they won’t be back for years after.

But after that initial landing, I do worry about the follow on China manned lunar program and think there is a legitimate argument to be made that the West does not want an increasingly autocratic and revanchist China setting the rules for the Moon and outer space generally because they’re eventually there in a sustained way when the West is not.  It’s a more sophisticated and harder argument to make than “beat China back to the Moon”, but we really need to be setting up Artemis for sustained success at scale.  If China is sending two missions per year in the mid-2030s, we need to be able to send four.  Etc.  That’s the real challenge, IMO, not making 2030 or 2028 or whatever date exactly, which threatens to sacrifice sustainability for a short-term win, like Apollo did.  I don’t expect Trump II to appreciate that kind of nuanced but important argument, but we’ll see.

The United States: regularly wining gold in the sprints, less commonly in the marathon.

[clongton]

...  Again, we’ve blown past 2024 and even 2028 is in jeopardy.  It’s not enough to announce random dates.  There needs to be programmatic and budgetary homework behind them.  Look at the VSE as another example.  We had program priorities and principles and a multi-year budget laid out right in the document (at least until Griffin reversed them).  There wasn’t even a hint of something like that behind these Trump I dates.

I remember this very well. I was so impressed with the VSE and the amount of work and planning that went into it, that for the life of me I couldn't understand why it died. It was my first hint that NASA did not ACTUALLY function under the authority of the President, no matter what the charter says. Everything was there; step by step, with intermediate goals and way posts, schedules, funding requirements, design trades and recommendations, etc., etc. All laid out perfectly. Everything you clearly stated above that is needed for a comprehensive, sustainable plan. You did a LOT of homework, as you stated above. But still it died. Why? Over time I learned that while the President sets the goals for NASA, it is Congress that is the real boss. NASA does what Congress tells it to do, not the President. Look no further than the Senate Launch System and its orphan child Orion for a crystal clear example of this. We are running around in circles, going nowhere fast. To your points about Pace, Pence and Bridenstine, I agree. But even that turned out to display that Congress rules over NASA, and the programs that NASA is charged with executing. Whomever controls the gold sets the rules.

[Coastal Ron]

That's funny, since HLS is a government program. And so is Commercial Cargo, and Commercial Crew. All government programs. How are they bad?

HLS and commercial crew and cargo are public-private partnerships with fixed priced milestones payments for development and services. SLS and Orion are cost-plus programs where the governments owns the end product. That model is bad and inefficient for human exploration and the source of the problem in my opinion.

IIRC it wasn't too long ago how you were an SLS supporter, whereas post-Constellation I have wanted NASA to rely on commercial launch services for their needs, just as the U.S. Air Force has done.

But launching hardware into space is one thing, whereas sending government employees out into space to do work is another. And we really don't understand what the right business model is yet, especially since there are no business models for the private sector to make money in space doing "space exploration". The only revenue that there is relies 100% on the U.S. Taxpayer - which is not a so-called "public-private relationship", it is the U.S. Government paying for everything.

The U.S. Government owning its own hardware is not inherently bad or wrong either, again because the private market doesn't yet have a robust business model for space exploration, so owning your own hardware could be the best way forward.

But so much of what is, I think, coloring your opinion is based on how badly Congress screwed up with the SLS and Orion programs. And yes, we as taxpayers should never have to fund such pork again. But that doesn't mean that the so-called "public-private partnerships" are the right approach either. They are the flavor of the month, so to speak, but they have not proven to be successful models yet.

The HLS program is trying to capture to successes of the Commercial Crew program, but we already know that only 50% of the Commercial Crew program is working as intended so far, so time will tell with HLS...

[yg1968]

That's funny, since HLS is a government program. And so is Commercial Cargo, and Commercial Crew. All government programs. How are they bad?

HLS and commercial crew and cargo are public-private partnerships with fixed priced milestones payments for development and services. SLS and Orion are cost-plus programs where the governments owns the end product. That model is bad and inefficient for human exploration and the source of the problem in my opinion.

IIRC it wasn't too long ago how you were an SLS supporter, whereas post-Constellation I have wanted NASA to rely on commercial launch services for their needs, just as the U.S. Air Force has done.

I was never a SLS and Orion supporter (I am not a fan of government competing with the private sector) but I was and still am a supporter of Artemis. What I said at the time is that if Congress forces NASA to use SLS and Orion, NASA has to live with that political reality. So NASA should control what it can control by ensuring that new programs are public-private partnerships programs. That is essentially what was done for the Artemis program and I agree with what was done. My opinion was always that SLS and Orion will cancel themselves once alternatives become available. But I think that time has come with New Glenn and Starship coming online now.

I find it odd that you are the one defending cost-plus programs as these programs have a tendency to be mismanaged. The best way to ensure that a program isn't mismanaged is by giving the management to the private sector. I think that the COTS/public-private partnership model has already proven itself with the commercial crew and cargo programs.

[thespacecow]

Jeff Bezos lobbying will ensure Moon remains a destination for the US space program. The senator from Washington  state, Maria Cantwell, who proposed $10B for 2nd lunar lander, is the ranking member on Senate Commerce Committee. Bezos also mended fences with Trump, and Isaacman has gone out of his way to praise Blue Origin recently.

If SLS/Orion is cancelled, there will be more than enough money for SpaceX Mars mission and Blue Origin lunar mission in parallel. Blue Origin's HLS contract can be restructured to become end to end crew/cargo transport to the Moon.

[TheRadicalModerate]

But after that initial landing, I do worry about the follow on China manned lunar program and think there is a legitimate argument to be made that the West does not want an increasingly autocratic and revanchist China setting the rules for the Moon and outer space generally because they’re eventually there in a sustained way when the West is not.  It’s a more sophisticated and harder argument to make than “beat China back to the Moon”, but we really need to be setting up Artemis for sustained success at scale.  If China is sending two missions per year in the mid-2030s, we need to be able to send four.  Etc.  That’s the real challenge, IMO, not making 2030 or 2028 or whatever date exactly, which threatens to sacrifice sustainability for a short-term win, like Apollo did.  I don’t expect Trump II to appreciate that kind of nuanced but important argument, but we’ll see.

We also don't know very much about what's valuable at the poles and what's not.  It seems likely that the number of PSRs with usefully mineable water can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and the terrain that gates access to those PSRs will be awfully valuable.  It doesn't require a huge number of missions to plunk down skeleton bases in enough places that the owner of those bases can claim "harmful interference" to their "space activities" (both phrases featuring prominently in the Artemis Accords), and block access to the goodies.

But you have to know where the goodies are first.

I also think that China's long-term strategy will want at least military parity with the West in all volumes of space that might be a threat, and there's an awful lot of cislunar space for people to operate military assets that can impact (possibly literally) near-Earth space.  But those assets will need logistical support, and that'll be hard to come by if the other side has a substantial advantage on the big round grey logistical base that's close to them.

I'd hope that the US can walk and chew gum at the same time, but if push came to shove, I'd much rather have us doing boring sustainable things on the Moon than flashy unsustainable things on Mars.

[Coastal Ron]

We also don't know very much about what's valuable at the poles and what's not.

I thought water was it, and any potential byproducts of freeing the water?

Regardless, as currently envisioned the HLS landers are not delivering more than science teams, and as currently scoped using the SLS and Orion there isn't time on the surface to do much more than grab samples.

It doesn't require a huge number of missions to plunk down skeleton bases in enough places that the owner of those bases can claim "harmful interference" to their "space activities" (both phrases featuring prominently in the Artemis Accords), and block access to the goodies.

Not sure what constitutes a "base". Does a space shack constitute a "base"?

I also think that China's long-term strategy will want at least military parity with the West in all volumes of space that might be a threat...

I'm trying to understand what this means, since in Earth-local space, beyond the Moon, there is no "land" to claim, and no "high ground" that can't be occupied by a LOT of other nations simultaneously. Space is vast, and no one can dominate.

And anyone starts putting weapons in space, then we can kiss peaceful space exploration goodbye.

But those assets will need logistical support, and that'll be hard to come by if the other side has a substantial advantage on the big round grey logistical base that's close to them.

I have long advocated that the best, and cheapest use of resources on the Moon will be for supporting activity on the Moon, not off of the Moon. Meaning that using the Moon as a refueling station is unlikely to happen. Certainly not for decades in any case.

I'd hope that the US can walk and chew gum at the same time, but if push came to shove, I'd much rather have us doing boring sustainable things on the Moon than flashy unsustainable things on Mars.

Well, Elon Musk wants to do things on Mars, and isn't relying on the U.S. Government. And I have seen no evidence that the Artemis missions to the Moon will result in some sort of "sustainable" exploration of the Moon. Maybe that will change, but Artemis today is set up to just be more "flags and footprints", and not something sustainable. Heck, Trump really doesn't want to return to the Moon, he wants to go to Mars, so messaging about the Moon is all over the place... 

[yg1968]

I wasn't aware that Pace was behind the 2024 date. That's news to me. Are you sure about that? I would have expected that date to be more NASA and Jim Bridenstine than the National Space Council and Scott Pace.

Yeah, it was Pence direction to Bridenstine/NASA announced at an NSC meeting (Pace’s forum, not Bridenstine’s), so it came from Pace.  (Pace is also lunar-centric going back to his L5 days, and you can read that position in his policy papers and testimony before he worked Trump I.)  Pence’s speech was really a slap in the face that Pace directed at Bridenstine to wake him up.  This is apparent from how forward-leaning Pence was, how negative Pence was on NASA in it, and how flat-footed Bridenstine’s response was.  Pence argued for an “all hands on-deck approach” and for NASA to “transform itself into a leaner, more accountable and more agile agency.”  Those kinds of statements wouldn’t have been made if the acceleration came from Bridenstine and NASA.  Those were words put in Pence’s mouth by Pace.  And while saluting the acceleration, Bridenstine wasn’t prepared at that meeting, was still defending the Orion/SLS schedule and Gateway, had no plan to implement the new direction, and could only promise the creation of a new mission directorate.  Bridenstine wouldn’t even have the moniker “Artemis” until some days later.

There’s nothing wrong with a White House organ metaphorically slapping the face of an agency head to get them to start paying attention to the most important goals the administration has charged them with.  But you do it behind closed doors — there should have been a come-to-Jesus meeting between Bridenstine and Pence with Pace in the room — and you give the agency head a little time to come back with an implementable plan, and iterate as necessary, before going public with revised policy goals.  Instead, Pace just had Pence announce an accelerated goal, direct some tough words at NASA, and left Bridenstine to pick up the pieces.  That’s not how you do things if you want the result to be an implementable, achievable program.  Since working for Rockwell decades ago, Pace’s career has been in a think tank or ivory tower.  When he came to Trump I, Pace had no practical experience getting things done beyond policy papers, which is apparent from the NSC output during this time.

The outcome could have been very different if, say, Pence/Pace gave Bridenstine a charge to develop a plan for a landing in 2024 to 2026, Bridenstine came back with F9/Centaur but said he’d need WH help with Shelby, and there had been some back and forth on the art of the possible before announcing a date.  Instead, there was some stumbling in public, a hard “no” from Shelby, and an effective abandonment of Bridenstine and the 2024 goal by Pence and the WH shortly thereafter.

Thanks for the information. I didn't realize that. I don't think that any of this was ever made public. I hope that someone writes a book on the history of Artemis one day as this kind of stuff is really interesting.

Ironically, your post makes Scott Pace seeem like the hero of the story. Pence's March 2019 speech was very good and was critical of SLS. It essentially said that if SLS can't be ready for 2024, NASA will ditch it in favor of commercial alternatives. It is surprising that Pace would encourage VP Pence to say something like that.

The 2024 lunar landing date/goal also forced NASA to change course on the lander. Prior to 2019, NextSTEP-2 Appendix E was discussing a 3 part lander where the crewed part of the lander would have been government owned and operated which would have been a disaster. In my opinion, the biggest achievements of Artemis will be the HLS and CLPS programs. I think that it is very important that these two programs be preserved under the Trump II Administration. It would be odd for Trump to dismantle his biggest human exploration achievements but you never know.

[yg1968]

Blue Origin's HLS contract can be restructured to become end to end crew/cargo transport to the Moon.

Someone can correct me if I am wrong but I don't think that you could do that without creating a new sollicitation. You could amend the existing HLS Contracts by doing a sole-source sollicitation in order to add Dragon (or Starliner?) but other companies are likely to object to this sole sourcing. NASA would have to defend the fact that Dragon (or Starliner?) is the only realistic option(s) in the next few years.

[DanClemmensen]

Don't be surprised if there is a major increase in price for HLS services after the current contracts are finished. And I would not be surprised to see a Cost Plus contract issued for NASA transportation services. Just throwing it out there... 

Why would SpaceX or BO do this? These are contracts for Artemis VI and beyond. They are supposed to be competitive, and they do not include a development component, just the service component. I suspect SpaceX will bid a fixed price based on its internal cost plus a nice profit. The inflation-adjusted price will almost certainly be well below the $1.13 B price of the Option B mission. We have less insight into BO pricing because Appendix P is not equivalent to the single-mission SpaceX Option B contract.

The other problem is that these missions all have unique added requirements and may therefore not be directly comparable. In particular, if a crewed mission must carry substantial cargo, it may be necessary to launch a new HLS from Earth instead of re-using the one from the prior mission.

[Proponent]

Yeah, it was Pence direction to Bridenstine/NASA announced at an NSC meeting (Pace’s forum, not Bridenstine’s), so it came from Pace.  (Pace is also lunar-centric going back to his L5 days, and you can read that position in his policy papers and testimony before he worked Trump I.)  Pence’s speech was really a slap in the face that Pace directed at Bridenstine to wake him up.  This is apparent from how forward-leaning Pence was, how negative Pence was on NASA in it, and how flat-footed Bridenstine’s response was.  Pence argued for an “all hands on-deck approach” and for NASA to “transform itself into a leaner, more accountable and more agile agency.”  Those kinds of statements wouldn’t have been made if the acceleration came from Bridenstine and NASA.  Those were words put in Pence’s mouth by Pace.  And while saluting the acceleration, Bridenstine wasn’t prepared at that meeting, was still defending the Orion/SLS schedule and Gateway, had no plan to implement the new direction, and could only promise the creation of a new mission directorate.  Bridenstine wouldn’t even have the moniker “Artemis” until some days later.

There’s nothing wrong with a White House organ metaphorically slapping the face of an agency head to get them to start paying attention to the most important goals the administration has charged them with.  But you do it behind closed doors — there should have been a come-to-Jesus meeting between Bridenstine and Pence with Pace in the room — and you give the agency head a little time to come back with an implementable plan, and iterate as necessary, before going public with revised policy goals.  Instead, Pace just had Pence announce an accelerated goal, direct some tough words at NASA, and left Bridenstine to pick up the pieces.  That’s not how you do things if you want the result to be an implementable, achievable program.  Since working for Rockwell decades ago, Pace’s career has been in a think tank or ivory tower.  When he came to Trump I, Pace had no practical experience getting things done beyond policy papers, which is apparent from the NSC output during this time.

On top of that, during Trump I Pace was characterizing SLS as a "strategic national asset" akin to a government-owned aircraft carrier. I have a hard time imagining him as a source anti-SLS agitation.

[Coastal Ron]

Don't be surprised if there is a major increase in price for HLS services after the current contracts are finished. And I would not be surprised to see a Cost Plus contract issued for NASA transportation services. Just throwing it out there... 

Why would SpaceX or BO do this?

I'm forecasting that their costs would have gone up, due to better understanding what the requirements entail. No mystery here.

These are contracts for Artemis VI and beyond. They are supposed to be competitive...

Whoa, what? Why do you think there is a requirement to be "competitive"? NASA wanted redundancy, and what they have right now is dissimilar redundancy, in that what SpaceX and Blue Origin are planning to provide is NOT the same except that it results in four astronauts on the surface of the Moon.

I suspect SpaceX will bid a fixed price based on its internal cost plus a nice profit.

What happened to that they had to be "competitive"? Now you are saying that they can bid what it cost them, plus a profit? Heretic! 

Seriously though, now you are agreeing with me.

The inflation-adjusted price will almost certainly be well below the $1.13 B price of the Option B mission.

Maybe, maybe not. I'm not thinking inflation is the major cost driver, but better understanding the overall task and how it has to be done.

The other problem is that these missions all have unique added requirements and may therefore not be directly comparable. In particular, if a crewed mission must carry substantial cargo, it may be necessary to launch a new HLS from Earth instead of re-using the one from the prior mission.

Dissimilar redundancy, and why NASA can't evaluate HLS contracts significantly on price.

[DanClemmensen]

The inflation-adjusted price will almost certainly be well below the $1.13 B price of the Option B mission.

Maybe, maybe not. I'm not thinking inflation is the major cost driver, but better understanding the overall task and how it has to be done.

Artermis VI is the earliest "competitive" HLS mission. It probably will not fly before 2032 (make your own prediction). It does not take much inflation to accumulate over seven years. For example $1.00 in 2018 would be $1.26 today.  In any event, if no inflation, then the adjustment is simple.

Starship HLS missions include Depot and Tanker operations, which will benefit from commonality with other Starship operations. SpaceX will almost certainly increase the efficiency, probably by increasing the sizes and possibly by using improved engines. This should drive down the cost quite a bit. This is without considering the possibility of reuse of the HLS itself.

[VSECOTSPE]

Ironically, your post makes Scott Pace seeem like the hero of the story. Pence's March 2019 speech was very good and was critical of SLS. It essentially said that if SLS can't be ready for 2024, NASA will ditch it in favor of commercial alternatives.

Yes and no.  Pence and Pace also abandoned Bridenstine when Shelby pushed back on F9/Centaur for Artemis I.  Nice words don’t mean much if you don’t back them up with action and support.

This is the problem with Pace.  Great with ideas.  But lousy at coordination, planning, and follow-through.  Typical for wonkish types from think tanks and ivory towers.  Theory and practice are two different things,

It is surprising that Pace would encourage VP Pence to say something like that.

That sentiment and those words would not have originated with a former governor of Indiana with no experience in, or personal staff from, the space sector.  They had to come from his head NSC staffer. 

Often where you sit is where you stand.

For years, Pace defended Shuttle-derived stupidity.  First as head of the program analysis and evaluation division at HQ.  When Griffin pushed the Stick, Pace looked the other way.  Then as one of Griffin’s lackeys during Griffin’s exile.  Pace repeated Griffin’s idiocy about SLS being an aircraft carrier and worse.

Once he was reporting to someone other than Griffin and in charge of actually getting things done as NSC exec chair, not just analyzing and opining, Pace finally grasped how much of an impediment Orion/SLS was.  So he changed his tune, as evidenced in Pence’s speech.  That’s continued to the present day, where Pace, in providing commentary on space under Trump II, has stated that Orion/SLS won’t survive in their current form.

The 2024 lunar landing date/goal also forced NASA to change course on the lander. Prior to 2019, NextSTEP-2 Appendix E was discussing a 3 part lander where the crewed part of the lander would have been government owned and operated which would have been a disaster.

I wouldn’t say “forced”.  There was no plan or coordination behind the 2024 announcement.  Bridenstine had to figure it out post facto, and luckily he landed on the approach he did for HLS.  And it was luck that SX was the leading contender for HLS, that there was just enough in the budget to afford Lunar Starship, and that the selection was made before Nelson was on board.  HLS is the result of a random walk, not any careful planning that was rolled out with the 2024 announcement.

In my opinion, the biggest achievements of Artemis will be the HLS and CLPS programs.

I agree.  But if they’re not part of a viable, productive Moon-to-Mars program, then those taxpayer dollars should be spent elsewhere.  There’s no point in spending billions on commercial landers if the rest of the architecture can only deliver a crew to those landers once every year or two at a cost of tens of billions.  Or if the program remains confused and unclear about its priorities beyond flags and footprints ASAP. If that remains the case with a govt-led Moon-to-Mars program, then just let SX and BO get to the Moon and Mars on their terms and stop wasting so many taxpayer resources and technical careers on a dysfunctional govt-led program.

I think that it is very important that these two programs be preserved under the Trump II Administration. It would be odd for Trump to dismantle his biggest human exploration achievements but you never know.

My preference would be to procure lunar crew transport capabilities to the HLS landers in lunar orbit and/or Gateway; transition off Orion/SLS ASAP even if that means missing 2030 by a bit; focus the rest of Artemis efforts on the handful a priorities that we need to do or can only be done at the Moon; and procure human-scale Mars landers and uncrewed pathfinding landings at Mars.

But maybe Trump and Musk decided at a dinner it should all be redirected at Mars and that’s what we’ll see in the March budget rollout.  Who knows?

Regardless, what I expect is some attempt at reform or change in direction that Trump II abandons when Congress pushes back.  Would love to be proven wrong.

[VSECOTSPE]

Blue Origin's HLS contract can be restructured to become end to end crew/cargo transport to the Moon.

Someone can correct me if I am wrong but I don't think that you could do that without creating a new sollicitation.

Unsurprisingly, the government has given itself a lot of latitude under the FAR to impose contract changes as it sees fit, often unilaterally.  But the kind of modification contemplated here would be an “out-of-scope modification”, meaning that the government wants a change in the statement of work (SOW) that will also result in a change to the cost of the contract.  Out-of-scope modifications require bilateral agreement between the government and contractor, and the government must justify the use of a sole source provider.

So, in theory, NASA could issue an out-of-scope modification to an HLS contractor (presumably SpaceX) for a complete lunar crew transport capability and/or a pathfinding unmanned Mars landing.  Key to this would be the sole source justification and associated schedule.  The only sole source justification I can see would be early delivery dates that only SpaceX has a shot at making because of how far along Starship is.

Even if NASA took this route, I’d still advise running a parallel competition for one or two additional suppliers with later delivery dates.  You don’t want the nation’s access to a whole other world dependent on a single contractor or system, even SX.  And the parallel competition will reduce/eliminate GAO/court challenges.

But if I were king, I would not sole-source this.  It smacks of the same procurement abuse, inside ball, and payoffs that Ares I and SLS have employed for a couple decades now.  It’s also lazy and increases the probability of poor results down the line.  Competitions focus everyone’s minds, make everyone do their homework, and provide opportunities for feedback and communication that create better requirements, contracts, and systems. And a competition allows a reset to Other Transaction Authority (Space Act Agreements), which are much more tailorable than the onerous FAR, which Congress has imposed on these programs ever since commercial crew.  An out-of-scope modification means the program is still stuck with the FAR.