NASA's Artemis Program Updates and Discussion Thread 6

[VSECOTSPE]

NASA Advances Lunar Nuclear Plan With Commercial Focus

The draft provides few new details about NASA’s requirements. One, restated from the directive, is that the system use a closed Brayton cycle power conversion system — a signal, industry officials said, that NASA wants the technology to scale to higher-power systems...

Under the Space Act Agreement structure, the company would own the reactor and sell power to NASA and other customers. The AFPP requires proposers to submit a financing plan “showing how cash from operations, financing, and NASA covers the expenses of the total end-to-end deployment of the FSP system.”

Proposers must also provide a “Commercial Lunar Power Business Plan” outlining the strategy, potential customers and market size. “The market should include or leverage customers other than NASA,” the draft states...

NASA’s blended approach is a “risky combination,” said Bhavya Lal, a former NASA associate administrator for technology, policy and strategy and a co-author of the report, in a SpaceNews webinar Aug. 28.

“It means doing a whole lot of first-of-its-kind things at once,” she said, from reactor design to a launch authorization process that has never been used.

https://spacenews.com/nasa-advances-lunar-nuclear-plan-with-commercial-focus/

Three big risks:

1) Technology — The world has almost zero experience with Brayton-cycle (air-cooled) reactors, in space or otherwise.

Few reactors have ever been coupled to closed Brayton-cycle systems.  As such, their behavior under dynamically varying loads, startup and shut down conditions, and requirements for safe and autonomous operation are largely unknown.  In addition the reactor and power conversion system are highly coupled because the turbo-machinery provides the shaft power to force coolant through the reactor.

http://web.mit.edu/22.33/www/brayton.pdf

There’s little or no heritage or knowledge base here to build on.  With the exception of some JIMO studies, the history of space reactor development is dominated by liquid cycles;  NERVA, SNAP, SP-100, KiloPower, etc.  Contrary to earlier claims, this also doesn’t build on any terrestrial microreactor developments that I’m aware of.

NASA requiring that the reactor use Brayton-cycle power production and cooling is like NASA requiring that the COTS contractors to build fully reusable launch systems back in 2005.  It’s dictating a technical solution that, however desirable in the long-term, poses enormous and likely insurmountable technology risk in the short-term for a private sector development.

If NASA wants a Brayton-cycle reactor, then NASA should pay for the demonstration of a Brayton-cycle reactor and make the technical details and results widely available.

If NASA wants to buy lunar power from a private sector provider, then NASA should leave the technology and technical trade space as wide open as possible.  (Given commercial interest in alternate RPS and the relative maturity of solar mass and power-beaming technologies, I’m not even sure the procurement should dictate a reactor or nuclear, forget Brayton-cycle.)

2) Customers — NASA is requiring lunar customers for this reactor besides itself.  There are none, now or foreseeable.  There are categories of things, like in-situ propellant production or a little lunar motel, one can imagine doing with this power.  But there are no actual companies or other entities actively pursuing those things.

NASA requiring that the reactor provider find lunar customers is like NASA requiring that the COTS providers find launch customers but in the 1950s, before the advent of commercial space communications and remote sensing satellite companies.

If NASA wants to stimulate the development of a commercial or private lunar economy, NASA has to bring along other elements of that ecosystem in parallel with the power source. 

If NASA won’t stimulate other elements of a lunar economy in parallel with the power source, then NASA should be agnostic about whether its power provider has other lunar customers.

3) Regulatory — If this project goes anywhere, this will be the first time that either NASA or the FAA’s launch clearance process has dealt a nuclear reactor.  It will get done, but as the first of its kind, it will take longer than anticipated.  This poses high business risk to the reactor provider, as they have to pay to keep their marching army in place with no income while the government works through a novel interagency clearance process for the first time.

Clearing this launch will be like clearing the first COTS launches but before the FAA had cleared even one commercial launch license.

If NASA wants a commercial reactor on the Moon, NASA should be prepared to pay the provider for government delays.

COTS built on existing launch technologies and systems, existing commercial launch customers, and existing launch regulations.  This commercial space reactor procurement has none of that going for it.  Missing one of those ingredients in an enormous challenge.  Missing all three is a recipe for failure.

I anticipate one of two outcomes here:

A) Null set response to the procurement.  No one credible wants to do this under the terms NASA has laid out and NASA has to go back to the drawing board in the months ahead.

B) NASA buys into a proposal from a non-credible provider, their effort craters, and NASA has to start over again in a couple years.

Outcome A would be the better one.

Something that might change my negative outlook on this procurement is if a Musk- or Bezos-type bazillionaire came out of the woodwork who was willing to donate a chunk of their fortune to live out their Star Trek fantasies pursuing the exact reactor that NASA wants.  Like Blue Origin so far, this might work on a non-profit or philanthropic basis.  But I don’t know anyone like that or see that happening.

I hate to engage in conspiracy theories, but this procurement seems so set up to fail that it makes me wonder if some manager at MSFC got Duffy’s limited attention on nuke power, was told to go the commercial route, and is pushing this through so that when it fails, they can argue to get their pet government reactor at MSFC fully funded over and above the annual $100M-class earmarks they already get.  Probably not, but this procurement is so weird that it makes me wonder.

FWIW...

[leovinus]

Three big risks:

1) Technology — The world has almost zero experience with Brayton-cycle (air-cooled) reactors, in space or otherwise.

Few reactors have ever been coupled to closed Brayton-cycle systems.  As such, their behavior under dynamically varying loads, startup and shut down conditions, and requirements for safe and autonomous operation are largely unknown.  In addition the reactor and power conversion system are highly coupled because the turbo-machinery provides the shaft power to force coolant through the reactor.

http://web.mit.edu/22.33/www/brayton.pdf

There’s little or no heritage or knowledge base here to build on.  With the exception of some JIMO studies, the history of space reactor development is dominated by liquid cycles;  NERVA, SNAP, SP-100, KiloPower, etc.  Contrary to earlier claims, this also doesn’t build on any terrestrial microreactor developments that I’m aware of.

Nuclear power generation via the Brayton cycle has been thought over and conceptually studied since the very beginnings of US space programs. The Brayton cycle was mentioned as part of the proposed nuclear experiments for the MTSS in 1960 and also for MOL in 1963. The latter was a study by Martin Co. NAS3-4161. It looks like no hardware was built but there will be research reports. The knowledge base is not zero but smaller than for SNAP which was way more concrete and tested in space. However, it is good to remember that "Brayton cycle in space" studies were earlier and more detailed than most realize.

[yg1968]

2) Customers — NASA is requiring lunar customers for this reactor besides itself.  There are none, now or foreseeable.  There are categories of things, like in-situ propellant production or a little lunar motel, one can imagine doing with this power.  But there are no actual companies or other entities actively pursuing those things.

Having non-NASA clients was also a recommendation for HLS, so presumably it would be the same private customers for the reactor. My guess is that having non-NASA customers isn't a requirement but more of a preference in order for NASA to pay less for these nuclear power services.

[VSECOTSPE]

Nuclear power generation via the Brayton cycle has been thought over and conceptually studied since the very beginnings of US space programs. The Brayton cycle was mentioned as part of the proposed nuclear experiments for the MTSS in 1960 and also for MOL in 1963. The latter was a study by Martin Co. NAS3-4161. It looks like no hardware was built but there will be research reports. The knowledge base is not zero but smaller than for SNAP which was way more concrete and tested in space. However, it is good to remember that "Brayton cycle in space" studies were earlier and more detailed than most realize.

I don’t think this is inconsistent with what I wrote.  A couple conceptual government studies from the 1950s are not enough, by a long shot, to build the technical arm of a business case.  Some Martin Marietta engineers from 60+ years ago thought they knew how a Brayton-cycle reactor would operate under different power demands and start-up/shut-down.  But their models have not been proven.  Absent a bazillionaire philanthropist, investors will want to know that their (or whoever’s) calculations are right before throwing hundreds of millions to low billions at this.  A Sandia team ran some Brayton loops using a simulated reactor over 15 years ago, but that’s still far from an actual reactor.

Having non-NASA clients was also a recommendation for HLS, so presumably it would be the same private customers for the reactor.

Probably not.  Those proposals were written in the absence of a reactor in NASA’s planning (such as it was).  The non-NASA customer for Starship is StarLink.  They’re not going to use a lunar reactor.  Maybe Blue Moon talked about lunar tourists or something like that.  But absent some entity providing them with accommodations beyond the lander, they’re not going to use a lunar reactor, either.

It could come together, but NASA has to have some idea of what it wants to get done on the Moon and work these elements with some degree of coordination and in parallel.  The serial random-walk through a pinball machine approach — buy the lander, do nothing for five years, then have an epiphany about a reactor, wait another half-decade, have another epiphany about a lunar ice ISRU demo to use that reactor, then another five years go by until someone realizes some science missions are needed to find and characterize that lunar ice, etc. — ain’t working.

My guess is that having non-NASA customers isn't a requirement but more of a preference in order for NASA to pay less for these nuclear power services.

From Foust’s article:

The AFPP requires proposers to submit a financing plan “showing how cash from operations, financing, and NASA covers the expenses of the total end-to-end deployment of the FSP system.”

Proposers must also provide a “Commercial Lunar Power Business Plan” outlining the strategy, potential customers and market size. “The market should include or leverage customers other than NASA,” the draft states.

FWIW...

[TheRadicalModerate]

“Going to stay” doesn’t answer that.  It may make space cadets like us with Post-Apollo Termination Syndrome feel better.  It may be a nice turn of phrase for a political document.  But it provides no clear vision.  It doesn’t tell us what we’re trying to do or why we’re going.  It doesn’t justify Artemis funding or provide any guidance on how that funding would be most effectively spent.

I don't see how you avoid a certain amount of, "If you build it, they will come," in the goals for a sustainable program.  You can cobble together a long list of of experiments and sample campaigns, but it needs to be flexible.  More importantly, it's likely not the long-term use for the Moon.  That's likely commercial, with a dash of industrial policy thrown in as things develop.

But you can envision a bunch of tech that enables a flexible program, which can respond to circumstances as we learn stuff.  Are PSRs accessible?  Do they contain economically exploitable quantities of water?  Will there be cislunar markets for commodities?  Will those markets require a mass driver?¹  Are we going to be able to do metals production on the surface at scale?  How much of lunar surface business is automated?  How good do teleoperated robots get?  What do the astronomers decide they need?  It's a very long list of questions, to which we know very few of the answers--and aren't likely to know the answers until we see how the infrastructure works.

But we know that everything is going to depend on a few core technologies:

1) Very cheap transport, both for cargoes and crews, to both the surface and lunar orbit.

2) Surface power for both daytime and nighttime operations.  (Whether those are the same power systems or not remains to be seen.)

3) Thermal management.

4) Comms and PNT.

5) Surface transport, suitable for both long- and short-term missions, both crewed and uncrewed.

6) Stuff that digs and moves regolith at relatively high scale.  (If it doesn't wind up being used for mining purposes, it'll still get used for berms and shielding.)

7) At least some amount of human habitation.  Whether that's continuous or not remains to be seen, as does whether it needs to be nighttime-habitable.  (I also wouldn't be surprised to find that the big pulse of humans occurs early, then declines to almost nothing as the automation gets better.)

That seems like a set of components that can handily consume an indefinite number of HDL missions, and will require at least ten crewed missions in the medium-term.  (After that, we'll see how the robots are looking.)

Artemis doesn't have to last forever.  It just has to lay down enough infrastructure that can be leveraged by more focused programs that follow it.

____________
¹Per our previous discussion about whether real estate is scarce or abundant, a mass driver may need to be on a piece of very scarce real estate:  My understanding is that the geometry is quite constrained if you intend to catch inert payloads at L1 or L2.  Whether or not you wind up needing a mass driver or not obviously depends on what the future in cislunar space looks like, but if you do, it scales much better if you don't need propulsion on the stuff being flung.

This seems like one of those cases where you'd like to plunk done a credible, long-term, experimental mission, to preserve the option of building it up later.

[yg1968]

Nice to hear SpaceX talking about the Moon again:

https://twitter.com/Gwynne_Shotwell/status/1962984963545981417

[thespacecow]

Some curious movements.

First, there's the SpaceNews op-ed from Douglas Loverro, Doug Cooke and Dan Dumbacher, which directly attacks Starship HLS:

But all that enthusiasm cannot change the cold hard facts that the current program is in trouble, that the mission date for Artemis III has been pushed back year after year since it began and that the success of a single Starship flight does little to assure a lander will be ready within the next five years. In fact, the number of technical hurdles SpaceX has thus far overcome pales in number and complexity to those that lay ahead.

...

So, what can be done? First and foremost, we need ground truth – someone to “check our homework.” NASA’s Artemis program lacks any true mechanism of public scrutiny needed to verify its status, especially for its landers. So, while to us the predicament is crystal clear – that alone can’t be the basis for the bold action that will be required if we are right. NASA needs to stand up a truly independent review team immediately to provide an assessment to the acting administrator, the president, and Congress within the next 45 days because, if a “Plan B” is needed, that planning needs to start now.

If we are right, then the hard work begins. Right now, we need transparency to confirm for the nation what we think we already know. The stakes could not be higher and we refuse to allow our nation, in this current century, to “lose the moon.”

Then we have Ted Cruz kicking Commercial Space Federation out of Red Moon hearing:

There are three witnesses listed on the committee's website as of noon ET on Tuesday: Allen Cutler, president and CEO of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration; Dave Cavossa, president of the Commercial Space Federation; and Jim Bridenstine, former administrator of NASA. Cutler heads the chief lobbying group for the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft, and Bridenstine leads government operations for United Launch Alliance, which is owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Cavossa was expected to provide some balance, especially as Cruz said he wants to "fuel" the nation's growing commercial space sector.

However, late last week, Cavossa was uninvited to the hearing. "The only thing I can say is that they reached out to us late last week to say they were moving us to a future 'commercial' space panel," Cavossa told Ars.

The Senate Committee's press office did not return a request for comment. According to sources, however, Cruz committee staffers were upset by something in Cavossa's prepared remarks. Given that he represents commercial space interests—Blue Origin and SpaceX are among the organization's executive members—it seems possible that Cavossa was advocating for these launch companies to step up should the Trump administration move forward with ending the SLS rocket.

[thespacecow]

I'm pretty sure Gwynne Shotwell's HLS tweet is a direct response to the Loverro/Cooke/Dumbacher op-ed, "Don’t bet against American innovation" really means "Do not bet against SpaceX".

I can just imagine what Plan B Loverro/Cooke/Dumbacher are thinking: cost plus lander, sole sourced to Boeing/LM, launch on SLS, advertised to take 5 years (needs to beat China after all), in reality we'd be lucky it can fly in 20 years. The question is do they have any political support for this nonsense.

That leads us to Ted Cruz's Red Moon hearing. High probability this is just to put lipstick on the pork rocket that Cruz is funding via BBB, but it's not out of the question Cruz could be so deep in bed with old space that he uses this hearing as a launch point for the new pork lander.

[TheRadicalModerate]

I can just imagine what Plan B Loverro/Cooke/Dumbacher are thinking: cost plus lander, sole sourced to Boeing/LM, launch on SLS, advertised to take 5 years (needs to beat China after all), in reality we'd be lucky it can fly in 20 years. The question is do they have any political support for this nonsense.

They've been flogging exactly that for years.  It's so ridiculous that even Congress isn't interested.  They don't have an SLS core available to waste on a lander.

That leads us to Ted Cruz's Red Moon hearing. High probability this is just to put lipstick on the pork rocket that Cruz is funding via BBB, but it's not out of the question Cruz could be so deep in bed with old space that he uses this hearing as a launch point for the new pork lander.

Whatever Cruz is up to seems more convoluted than just the usual Boeing / NorGrumm / LockMart lobbying.  There are some JSC jobs at stake if Orion goes down, and also a lot of mission control would go to the private guys, but Cruz is also the Senator for the state where SpaceX is headquartered and does the bulk of its HLS work, and Blue has a pretty good-sized operation in Van Horne.  My guess is that there was a deal to be made across multiple interest groups, with only one of those groups being aerospace, and Cruz made it.

The canary in the coal mine for all of this is EPOC.  Everybody's perfectly happy not to execute the contract, and it gets pushed to the right all the time.  If that were to change, it would be a red flag.

I suspect you're making much ado about nothing.  Every so often, the Boeing shills come out to play, requiring SpaceX to make a pro forma statement, just to prove that they're still paying attention.  Nothing to see here; move along.

[woods170]

I'm pretty sure Gwynne Shotwell's HLS tweet is a direct response to the Loverro/Cooke/Dumbacher op-ed, "Don’t bet against American innovation" really means "Do not bet against SpaceX".

I can just imagine what Plan B Loverro/Cooke/Dumbacher are thinking: cost plus lander, sole sourced to Boeing/LM, launch on SLS, advertised to take 5 years (needs to beat China after all), in reality we'd be lucky it can fly in 20 years. The question is do they have any political support for this nonsense.

That leads us to Ted Cruz's Red Moon hearing. High probability this is just to put lipstick on the pork rocket that Cruz is funding via BBB, but it's not out of the question Cruz could be so deep in bed with old space that he uses this hearing as a launch point for the new pork lander.

"Doug Loverro is the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy and former Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations at NASA."
Doug Loverrro is also the guy who was forced to resign from NASA (under pressure from then NASA-administrator Jim Bridenstine) for violating procurement black-out regulations during the HLS Phase A contest, back in 2020. He contacted Boeing illegally to inform them of the weaknesses in their HLS bid. Boeing then proceeded to try to get a modified proposal entered while the proposal period had already closed.

"Doug Cooke is former NASA Associate Administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate with a NASA career of 38 years at Johnson Space Center and NASA Headquarters."
Doug Cooke is also the guy who, as NASA's deputy associate administrator for exploration, managed (pun intended) to let the Constellation Program (CxP) get totally out of control, with regards to both cost and schedule. This led to the CxP being shut down in 2010. And ironically (some would say it was karma) it was Doug Cooke who had to write the order to close CxP down.

"Dan Dumbacher is the former CEO of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, a professor of engineering practice at the Purdue University School of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a former Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems in Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters."
Dan Dumbacher was also the  Program Director for Exploration Systems Development, which included: the Space Launch System, Orion, and Ground Systems Development and Operations development and integration efforts. We all know how "well" that went: years late and billions of dollars over budget.

So, we have three gentlemen here writing this op-ed, attacking SpaceX for being late and behind schedule. Very much NOT to my surprise this attack comes from three hard-core old-space champions. People who've had close ties to old-space giants like Boeing Space, Northrop-Grumman and Lockheed-Martin. Exactly those companies that are set to lose the most from the rise of SpaceX and other new-space companies.

[Robotbeat]

If these three are upset about Starship HLS delaying a lunar landing, they have a lot to answer for for not pushing for a lander to be developed FIRST, before Ares/SLS. Massive pot, kettle.

[VSECOTSPE]

I don't see how you avoid a certain amount of, "If you build it, they will come," in the goals for a sustainable program.  You can cobble together a long list of of experiments and sample campaigns, but it needs to be flexible.  More importantly, it's likely not the long-term use for the Moon.  That's likely commercial, with a dash of industrial policy thrown in as things develop.

But you can envision a bunch of tech that enables a flexible program, which can respond to circumstances as we learn stuff.  Are PSRs accessible?  Do they contain economically exploitable quantities of water?  Will there be cislunar markets for commodities?  Will those markets require a mass driver?¹  Are we going to be able to do metals production on the surface at scale?  How much of lunar surface business is automated?  How good do teleoperated robots get?  What do the astronomers decide they need?  It's a very long list of questions, to which we know very few of the answers--and aren't likely to know the answers until we see how the infrastructure works.

But we know that everything is going to depend on a few core technologies:

1) Very cheap transport, both for cargoes and crews, to both the surface and lunar orbit.

2) Surface power for both daytime and nighttime operations.  (Whether those are the same power systems or not remains to be seen.)

3) Thermal management.

4) Comms and PNT.

5) Surface transport, suitable for both long- and short-term missions, both crewed and uncrewed.

6) Stuff that digs and moves regolith at relatively high scale.  (If it doesn't wind up being used for mining purposes, it'll still get used for berms and shielding.)

7) At least some amount of human habitation.  Whether that's continuous or not remains to be seen, as does whether it needs to be nighttime-habitable.  (I also wouldn't be surprised to find that the big pulse of humans occurs early, then declines to almost nothing as the automation gets better.)

That seems like a set of components that can handily consume an indefinite number of HDL missions, and will require at least ten crewed missions in the medium-term.  (After that, we'll see how the robots are looking.)

Some comments, one negative-ish, one neutral-ish, and one positive-ish:

Negative-ish:

Some of this is like Melroy’s taxonomy.  It lists engineering subsystems that are needed in any human (and many robotic) mission, like thermal, comms, and transport, without much specificity as to what _Artemis_ needs. 

For example, to pick on transport and habitation, a mobile hab has shown up in NASA’s plans as a solution to both that would enable multi-week journeys.  Okay, but why?  What will the crew do that requires that much travel?  If it’s gathering Aitken Basin mantle and other geological samples, isn’t that what the robotic Endurance rover mission is supposed to do?  Does Artemis ever plan to build up a surface “base” (where you seem to be headed) or will it be in this research expedition mode for the foreseeable future?

Another late-breaking example on power... why a risky, practically unproven and poorly understood Brayton-cycle for the reactor?  Ostensibly for “scalability” but to what?  Mars transport?  A megawatt lunar surface application?  Something else?  Artemis planning will become dependent on that reactor.  If Brayton doesn’t work, Artemis won’t work.  What enormous benefit is worth taking this risk?

Combining the two... what’s the point of a stationary reactor if the future of Artemis is wrapped around a mobile hab?  And vice-versa?  Is the mobile hab dead?  In the absence of any driving guidance on what the program as a whole will be doing, the program is just ping-ponging from one cool sandbox concept to another.  Another engineering taxonomy like yours or Melroy’s doesn’t change this.  It’s not what generic systems does the program need.  It’s what is the program going to do — going to achieve — that drives intelligent (versus random) systems tradeoffs.

You lay out cheap transport to lunar orbit and surface, but why?  What will Artemis do that needs cheap space transport?  Why can’t Artemis just keep plugging along with a manned mission every couple years on Orion/SLS?  Why should Congress go thru the political pain of terminating Orion/SLS?  (Or why should the White House go thru the political pain of forcing Congress to terminate Orion/SLS?)  What will an Artemis program on Starship deliver that is worth firing or relocating large segments of the Orion/SLS workforce and shutting down that infrastructure?

Neutral-ish:

I think you’re laying out an industrially-centered Artemis that transitions from temporary crews standing up a production capability to a permanent robotic workforce that does the actual production.  There needs to be more clarity on what they might be producing, but setting that aside, that vision is fine. 

But yg1968’s comments about “going back to stay” is what (re)started this conversation.  Does a robotic production capability fulfill yg’s prime directive here?  Does occasional or routine human tending of that robotic base qualify?  Or to fulfill his vision, does yg want human crews on the lunar surface 24/7/365, like ISS?

This isn’t a critique of your (RadMod’s) post or yg’s.  I’m just pointing out the lack of clarity on what Artemis is really about even between a couple/few space cadets who follow the program very closely.  If we have this much divergence on our pokey little board as to what Artemis is really about, imagine the confusion within the program.

Positive-ish:

In a couple/few places, you lay out options to be decided later like day/night power and habitation.  That’s fine.  Great even.  Plans should have optionality, on-/off-ramps, etc.  We are not omniscient gods.  We need to be humble and set forks in the road for others to choose later.  It’s okay to pursue a couple parallel options and downselect later.

That sort of thinking is nearly or completely absent from Artemis planning.  It desperately needs it.

¹Per our previous discussion about whether real estate is scarce or abundant, a mass driver may need to be on a piece of very scarce real estate:  My understanding is that the geometry is quite constrained if you intend to catch inert payloads at L1 or L2.  Whether or not you wind up needing a mass driver or not obviously depends on what the future in cislunar space looks like, but if you do, it scales much better if you don't need propulsion on the stuff being flung.

I’m skeptical about terrestrial mass driver launchers, maglev launchers, spin launchers and the like because of the highly precise alignments that those systems need to achieve and maintain in order to work at the speeds required.  The USN shut down its electromagnetic gun work in part because the maintenance requirements between firings were unrealistic.  Missiles are easier.  Same will probably be true for launchers for the foreseeable future.  I can’t imagine maintaining such a system on the Moon.  Love me some High Frontier, but some of that stuff was more fantasy than sci-fi based on foreseeable engineering.

FWIW...

[VSECOTSPE]

Whatever Cruz is up

I think the Cruz hearing is about making noise so that the White House/OMB does not hold up Orion, SLS, or other funding from his additions to the reconciliation bill.  It’s “don’t let Vought impound my reconciliation funding” because “we have to beat China back to the Moon by 2030”.

I doubt the hearing itself will have any effect on the White House.  If OMB impounds a lot of NASA funding starting in October, it’s going to come down to calls between Cruz or Duffy or whoever and Trump to convince Trump to direct Vought to back off.  Cruz obviously cares enough to make that call but has a rocky history with Trump.  Unclear where Duffy will come down.

And for reasons of future legal battles, Vought/OMB may be more targeted with their impoundment moves, anyway, and leave NASA out of it.  Have to wait and see.

[VSECOTSPE]

"Doug Loverro is the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy and former Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations at NASA."
Doug Loverrro is also the guy who was forced to resign from NASA (under pressure from then NASA-administrator Jim Bridenstine) for violating procurement black-out regulations during the HLS Phase A contest, back in 2020. He contacted Boeing illegally to inform them of the weaknesses in their HLS bid. Boeing then proceeded to try to get a modified proposal entered while the proposal period had already closed.

"Doug Cooke is former NASA Associate Administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate with a NASA career of 38 years at Johnson Space Center and NASA Headquarters."
Doug Cooke is also the guy who, as NASA's deputy associate administrator for exploration, managed (pun intended) to let the Constellation Program (CxP) get totally out of control, with regards to both cost and schedule. This led to the CxP being shut down in 2010. And ironically (some would say it was karma) it was Doug Cooke who had to write the order to close CxP down.

"Dan Dumbacher is the former CEO of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, a professor of engineering practice at the Purdue University School of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a former Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems in Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters."
Dan Dumbacher was also the  Program Director for Exploration Systems Development, which included: the Space Launch System, Orion, and Ground Systems Development and Operations development and integration efforts. We all know how "well" that went: years late and billions of dollars over budget.

Thank you for writing this so I didn’t have to.

[TheRadicalModerate]

Some of this is like Melroy’s taxonomy.  It lists engineering subsystems that are needed in any human (and many robotic) mission, like thermal, comms, and transport, without much specificity as to what _Artemis_ needs. 

For example, to pick on transport and habitation, a mobile hab has shown up in NASA’s plans as a solution to both that would enable multi-week journeys.  Okay, but why?  What will the crew do that requires that much travel?  If it’s gathering Aitken Basin mantle and other geological samples, isn’t that what the robotic Endurance rover mission is supposed to do?  Does Artemis ever plan to build up a surface “base” (where you seem to be headed) or will it be in this research expedition mode for the foreseeable future?

Another late-breaking example on power... why a risky, practically unproven and poorly understood Brayton-cycle for the reactor?  Ostensibly for “scalability” but to what?  Mars transport?  A megawatt lunar surface application?  Something else?  Artemis planning will become dependent on that reactor.  If Brayton doesn’t work, Artemis won’t work.  What enormous benefit is worth taking this risk?

Combining the two... what’s the point of a stationary reactor if the future of Artemis is wrapped around a mobile hab?  And vice-versa?  Is the mobile hab dead?  In the absence of any driving guidance on what the program as a whole will be doing, the program is just ping-ponging from one cool sandbox concept to another.  Another engineering taxonomy like yours or Melroy’s doesn’t change this.  It’s not what generic systems does the program need.  It’s what is the program going to do — going to achieve — that drives intelligent (versus random) systems tradeoffs.

You lay out cheap transport to lunar orbit and surface, but why?  What will Artemis do that needs cheap space transport?  Why can’t Artemis just keep plugging along with a manned mission every couple years on Orion/SLS?  Why should Congress go thru the political pain of terminating Orion/SLS?  (Or why should the White House go thru the political pain of forcing Congress to terminate Orion/SLS?)  What will an Artemis program on Starship deliver that is worth firing or relocating large segments of the Orion/SLS workforce and shutting down that infrastructure?

One of the things that's buried in your critique is the assumption that "Artemis" is a catch-all for "all crewed lunar activities into the indefinite future".  I think of it much more in terms of putting in place the minimum viable infrastructure around which follow-on programs can be built.  I guess that's as close as I'll come to providing a goal.

So I'm a modest fan of the Melroy laundry list, in that it enables a better laundry list sooner, and an initiation of non-Artemis follow-on programs sooner.  I doubt we're ever gonna see Artemis XXXVI, but I hope we see Ice Miner IV, or Metals Reducer III.

Note that cheap transport makes a minimum viable product strategy much easier to pull off, because replacing cheesy hab #1 with less-cheesy hab #2 is a lot cheaper.  Same thing is true with power systems, where cheap transport and an emphasis on modularity let you hedge your bets in terms of scale, while incurring very little overhead in terms of transport and deployment.

You have a fair point on the pressurized rover, which I'd go to great lengths not to call a mobile hab.  Do you need one at all?  Probably.  But it's more a question of defining its range as minimally as possible, learning the lessons and use cases, and doing a better job with pressurized rover #2.

NASA has a terrible habit of trying to plan multi-decade projects down to the last bolt and chip, then they wonder why the easiest projects get mired in constant re-plans and ECOs, and the harder projects become similar in reality to the kind of things we discuss on this forum.  This is where I would insert my waterfall-vs-iterative rant, but you already know it. 

Getting NASA to take the lessons learned to heart and not over-plan (and over-goal) complex projects would be a tremendous improvement.  This seems like something that NASA ought to be able to decide with purely internal policy; it shouldn't impact either the legislative or budget-control aspects, other than making sure that everybody understands how the specs are going to be written going forward.

I think you’re laying out an industrially-centered Artemis that transitions from temporary crews standing up a production capability to a permanent robotic workforce that does the actual production.  There needs to be more clarity on what they might be producing, but setting that aside, that vision is fine. 

I think a commercially-centered outcome is more likely than a scientifically-centered or soft-power-centered outcome, but my main point is that we need to very humble in knowing how things will come out.  As Neils Bohr (and Yogi Berra) said, "Predictions are hard, especially about the future."

But yg1968’s comments about “going back to stay” is what (re)started this conversation.  Does a robotic production capability fulfill yg’s prime directive here?  Does occasional or routine human tending of that robotic base qualify?  Or to fulfill his vision, does yg want human crews on the lunar surface 24/7/365, like ISS?

This isn’t a critique of your (RadMod’s) post or yg’s.  I’m just pointing out the lack of clarity on what Artemis is really about even between a couple/few space cadets who follow the program very closely.  If we have this much divergence on our pokey little board as to what Artemis is really about, imagine the confusion within the program.

FWIW, I disagree with yg's formulation for exactly this reason.  We simply don't know how things are gonna turn out.  About the only thing that's certain is that the plan of record contradicts the one goal that everybody agrees on: sustainability.

In a couple/few places, you lay out options to be decided later like day/night power and habitation.  That’s fine.  Great even.  Plans should have optionality, on-/off-ramps, etc.  We are not omniscient gods.  We need to be humble and set forks in the road for others to choose later.  It’s okay to pursue a couple parallel options and downselect later.

That sort of thinking is nearly or completely absent from Artemis planning.  It desperately needs it.

That's because Congress is still unwilling to address the original sin of SLS/Orion.  I was hoping they'd take the off-ramp that the PBR offered them, but apparently not.  I do think that they finally realized that there was a chance for significant humiliation in the not-too-distant future, and they stuffed that "We'll change our minds when somebody shows us a better, cheaper system," into the appropriation language.  When that happens (p > 75%), I suppose they'll all congratulate themselves on their wisdom and foresight, and we'll have to let them get away with it.  (I remember a time when I thought politics was kinda fun...)

¹Per our previous discussion about whether real estate is scarce or abundant, a mass driver may need to be on a piece of very scarce real estate:  My understanding is that the geometry is quite constrained if you intend to catch inert payloads at L1 or L2.  Whether or not you wind up needing a mass driver or not obviously depends on what the future in cislunar space looks like, but if you do, it scales much better if you don't need propulsion on the stuff being flung.

I’m skeptical about terrestrial mass driver launchers, maglev launchers, spin launchers and the like because of the highly precise alignments that those systems need to achieve and maintain in order to work at the speeds required.  The USN shut down its electromagnetic gun work in part because the maintenance requirements between firings were unrealistic.  Missiles are easier.  Same will probably be true for launchers for the foreseeable future.  I can’t imagine maintaining such a system on the Moon.  Love me some High Frontier, but some of that stuff was more fantasy than sci-fi based on foreseeable engineering.

I mostly added the footnote because this is yet another real estate problem where you don't want to guess negatively and turn out to be wrong.  Using an ongoing mission to stake out the necessary real estate doesn't cost a lot as a hedge.  Beyond that:  yeah, still science fiction.

[TheRadicalModerate]

Whatever Cruz is up to

I think the Cruz hearing is about making noise so that the White House/OMB does not hold up Orion, SLS, or other funding from his additions to the reconciliation bill.  It’s “don’t let Vought impound my reconciliation funding” because “we have to beat China back to the Moon by 2030”.

That doesn't make sense, because the only thing he had to do to avoid that crisis was to stay silent in the OBBBA and work it all out in the CR.  The fact that he drew the line in the sand, knowing that it could provoke the crisis, means... something.¹  And I still don't understand why he's chosen such an unlucrative hill to die on.

My best guess is it's the congressional equivalent of one of those kidney donor chains, where a zillion unrelated appropriations all have to be executed by different people to get most of what everybody sorta-kinda wants.  Cruz is often tone-deaf, but he's not even slightly stupid.  There's a payoff in here that we're not seeing.

__________
¹I guess he could have been instructed by the White House to provoke the crisis, but that seems... uncharacteristically subtle... for those guys.

[yg1968]

Whatever Cruz is up to

I think the Cruz hearing is about making noise so that the White House/OMB does not hold up Orion, SLS, or other funding from his additions to the reconciliation bill.  It’s “don’t let Vought impound my reconciliation funding” because “we have to beat China back to the Moon by 2030”.

That doesn't make sense, because the only thing he had to do to avoid that crisis was to stay silent in the OBBBA and work it all out in the CR.  The fact that he drew the line in the sand, knowing that it could provoke the crisis, means... something.¹  And I still don't understand why he's chosen such an unlucrative hill to die on.

My best guess is it's the congressional equivalent of one of those kidney donor chains, where a zillion unrelated appropriations all have to be executed by different people to get most of what everybody sorta-kinda wants.  Cruz is often tone-deaf, but he's not even slightly stupid.  There's a payoff in here that we're not seeing.

__________
¹I guess he could have been instructed by the White House to provoke the crisis, but that seems... uncharacteristically subtle... for those guys.

The White House isn't going to impound spending from its own bill. Inpounding is risky from a legal/constitutional perspective and it's not going to get used for something like SLS and Orion. It might get used on the President's priorities and cancelling SLS and Orion isn't one of them. Duffy hasn't spoken about canceling SLS and Orion, he is happy to let Congress sort it out.

[yg1968]

Whatever Cruz is up

I think the Cruz hearing is about making noise so that the White House/OMB does not hold up Orion, SLS, or other funding from his additions to the reconciliation bill.  It’s “don’t let Vought impound my reconciliation funding” because “we have to beat China back to the Moon by 2030”.

I doubt the hearing itself will have any effect on the White House.  If OMB impounds a lot of NASA funding starting in October, it’s going to come down to calls between Cruz or Duffy or whoever and Trump to convince Trump to direct Vought to back off.  Cruz obviously cares enough to make that call but has a rocky history with Trump.  Unclear where Duffy will come down.

And for reasons of future legal battles, Vought/OMB may be more targeted with their impoundment moves, anyway, and leave NASA out of it.  Have to wait and see.

No it's not related to that. The announcement of the hearing stated the reasons for the hearing, it's for the Senate's NASA Authorization bill. You should expect some of the content from Cruz' amendments to the Big Beautiful bill to be included in the revised NASA Authorization bill.

[yg1968]

FWIW, I disagree with yg's formulation for exactly this reason.  We simply don't know how things are gonna turn out.  About the only thing that's certain is that the plan of record contradicts the one goal that everybody agrees on: sustainability.

I don't think that it was my formulation. It was more the one by Melroy in the Architecture. My understanding is that she ultimately meant 365 days 24 hours human or robotic presence but most of the human presence would be by private astronauts as NASA would be limited to 30 days missions per year.

My own view is the one described by Shotwell in the post above (see the link below). I hope that SpaceX, Musk and Shotwell get behind that one.

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=62717.msg2714317#msg2714317

[catdlr]

Eric Berger
@SciGuySpace
This is the wildest timeline in space:
• Trump White House realizes Artemis changes are needed
• Senate says jokes on you, we're doubling down
• SpaceX doubters reemerge after slumber
• Bridenstine returns to Senate, quaffing Dew
• China quietly pulls ahead in space race

https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/1963345729721962900