35 thoughts on “Artemis III”

  1. My prediction is that it will never happen, if by definition it uses SLS.

    The prognostication on the table is that it won’t use either SLS or Orion, but a Crew Dragon to do ES/LEO/ES and a Lunar Starship for LEO/TLI/LO//LL/LO/TEI/LEO. Picking up fuel presumably from a tanker vehicle while in LEO & LO. Might these tankers be expendable for LO and reusable in LEO? It is interesting to consider the alternatives here. The mass being conserved the most is the fuel mass, both outbound and inbound with different engines in use during different phases. But essentially almost everything being reused with the exception of the Falcon 9 second stage and the Lunar Orbital Tankers perhaps. If they can serve primarily as holding tanks for the return to Earth boost, then they are probably re-usable as well as the out-bound Starship arrives to put the fuel mass there and not have to transport it down and up from the Lunar surface. So effectively we need two versions of Starship. The Artemis lunar lander version already supposedly in the works and the tanker version. Putting the return to Earth on the already proven Dragon Crew Capsule also allows some significant simplification of Starship capabilities. One can see how this approach could be done on a step-wise basis, with rapid turnaround possible in case an emergency should develop. SLS’s one and done, (for a year or more) even with the toll booth, sounds like a good way to get crew stranded in space.

    1. It’s looking to me like mid to late 2030s for all this if you ask me. If for no other reason, but time will be needed for the current SLS failure to become so obvious that it must be abandoned. That will probably take at least until 2026. There is also *a lot* of Starship yet to be proven, plus the need to develop the tanker as well. This cannot be done on Elon time, I’m pretty sure of that.

          1. I hope Starbucks is working on their low-G expresso machine. It would be nice to have the NASA astronauts getting a decent beverage when they finally arrive.

        2. The difficulty is in testing and iterations. Right now, we need something but it shouldn’t be designed for perfection but just to be good enough. Trips to the Moon should be happening with such regularity that multiple suits can be tested and rapidly iterated.

          What if there were a row of robotic arms with test suit arms outside whatever outpost is set up and they wave at Earth until failure? NASA could set up chess boards with test arms at either end and have people play chess to test out the various suits.

          1. Why am I imagining lunar colonies with outside clothes lines? Gee, next thing you’ll see are hubcaps off the rovers and stacks of old dead batteries, all on the porch to the front airlock*….

            *On the moon, ALL the directions to your house involve unpaved roads.

      1. Also, for a tanker in LLO it will likely be necessary to maintain some propulsive capability because lunar orbits are notoriously unstable because of mass cons. Plus there may be an advantage to be able to return to LEO for maintenance?

        I like to speculate as to whether it would be best to use quick connects for fuel transfer or better/more-reliable to just use hoses with traditional couplings and get good at crew EVA for this task? Would the latter greatly simplify things?

  2. “This is not your grandparents’ NASA, which delivered the Apollo Program on time and on budget.”

    I got a laugh out of the “on budget” part of this sentence. During Apollo, NASA’s unofficial motto was “waste anything but time.” They got the “on time” part right, but only because they were willing to throw vast amounts of money at the program.

    As for Artemis III, the Crew Dragon/Starship seems the most reasonable approach, assuming that SpaceX is successful with Starship. I think they will succeed, but it’s not a given just yet.

    1. First launch. Fuel transfer test. First Starlink launch. Polaris III (first crewed launch), dear.Moon (first circumlunar crewed flight). You can tick them off as they happen, and either succeed or fail. Polaris III and dear.Moon will certainly have uncrewed precursor flights.

      1. Yes. I think all of those boxes will be checked by mid-decade. At which point an all-Starship crewed lunar landing mission can proceed almost at once. The one factor I don’t think Mr. Berger’s mysterious prognosticator has properly allowed for is Jared Isaacman.

  3. While he/she/it may be a “reliable” source, in the sense that “they” leaks to Ars Technica, no anonymous source can be an “unbiased” source, as asserted by the subhead. Why is “they” anonymous? Afraid? Coward. Maybe lose job because not authorized? Then should be fired as soon as doxxed. And if a government employee, then jail might be a proper outcome. Or do we think leakers are cool only when we like what they leak? You want transparency? Get it legally. What Berger is selling is the moral equivalent of the Pee Dossier.

    I myself have always suspected the first USA lunar landing would be in 2028 because that was the tentative goal all along. The move leftwards was largely Trump driven, and I figured the blighters would slip it rightwards as they were able. The original plan was to build Gateway first, and then look at a landing. Which is why pre-SpaceX Starship, there was no lander in the works. Which anti-space president do we imagine might have suggested we stand back a bit and let the Chinese get there first. CZ-5G in 2027, eh?

    Making up conspiracy theories is fun!

      1. Among the many reasons I never worked as a journalist. My experiences with nonfiction magazines was bad enoiugh. Although I guess being a has-been science fiction writer is at least as good a qualification for becoming a space reporter as being a certified meteorologist (or having been a sports reporter like the NSF guy). When I went to see STS-1, my writer credentials got me a press pass. Most of the real reporters there didn’t seem to know anything about space stuff. Jerry Pournelle was there, but we didn’t know each other then.

    2. Sounds to me like he was stating his informed opinion on an under performing government agency, not some secret info. There isn’t much that’s classified about NASA. The First Amendment gives us the right to do that. There are a lot of Swamp Creatures who leak actual classified info for political purposes. That’s quite different from stating unclassified opinions.

      1. It doesn’t work that way in practice, though, and a lot depends on who the leaker turns out to be. Whose going to enforce those first amendment rights, the ACLU? Or do you have Giant Lawyer Bux? What the Space Prophet is saying in this case migh be cosntrued as libel, depending again on who his is.

        Also, while it’s legal for a reporter to use an anonymous source, the courts have not protected the sourced anonymity, and can jail a reporter for refusing to reveal said source.

        Journalism also uses anonymous source to pump up the value of a story. “Anonymous White Hourse source reveals President Biden suffers from terminal apocrine disorder!” sounds a lot bigger than, “Fred Schmidlap of the White Mailroom sez Joe Biden stinks!”

        “Industry insider” sounds more meaningful than “some boob who works for Boeing and posts on NSF.”

  4. “Today, the agency receives far less budget relative to federal spending,”

    So? A better metric would be budget adjusted for inflation but even then, the budget is less important than how it is used. Berger hits on
    this a little at the end with his imagined alternative but without realizing it.

    It does look like NASA has become complacent and lacks a sense of urgency. How much is due to poor oversight from politicians and how much is due to entrenched modes of thinking hardly matters. This has to change at least a little bit as SpaceX demonstrates their capabilities over the coming years but who can say by how much.

    1. Why be in a hurry when you can milk a program for the better part of your career? It’s like road construction, what’s the rush? Apollo worked fast, and it ended fast, too. A lot of people lost their jobs when Apollo ended. That lesson was learned by those who kept their jobs.

      1. I live in a booming city next to a so-called highway which has been in so-called construction for years. Once those few miles are done, the stretch in the next county is planned to be milked for at least the rest of the decade.

        This is the Chinese century. The rest of us are just living in it.

  5. In all due fairness to the anonymous source, a heck of a lot of people five years or so ago picked 2023 or later as the SLS first launch date. It was rather obvious that there would be massive delays.

    I was one of those people, and have a bet with a friend of mine on it. The bet is specific; If SLS lights at least one of its SRBs before midnight ET on Dec 31st of this year, I lose. The bet is a can of soda, so I’m very highly invested in this! (No one can say I don’t put my money where my big mouth is!)

    So, I’m rooting for a launch delay. 🙂

    2. I live on the East coast, so got up at 12:30am and watched through TLI. I’m happy it worked, and its interesting the 5seg SRBs worked fine despite the long delay. They did look more fireworkey than the Shuttle SRBs, post burnout. Now maybe Starship can have a try.

  7. I had to look hard to find anyone discussing the launch. Outside the community of space enthusiasts, nobody seems inspired. Even within, it is hardly worth a mention. I think that’s because as successful as the launch is; the imagery is bad (NASA learned nothing from the post Columbia years of using cameras nor what SpaceX and others do now), there is nothing to really see until much later in the mission, maybe splashdown will be something, and then that’s it for at least 4 years.

  8. Do you think they’ll let Starship fly now? Was that the real bottleneck: You can’t fly till Artemis does?

    1. I believe that was part of it. I also believe SpaceX took advantage of the bureaucratic delay to put a lot more work into it up front. It’s a much better booster now, and we’ll see what happens with the orbiter. Looks like there are going to be at least 6 versions of Starship: tanker, depot, LSS, cargo/satellit, and crew. Mars SS will be evolutions of cargo and crew.

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