A good article from Irene Klotz.
[Afternoon update]
What comes after Artemis III?
The Musk derangement is strong in comments.
And this had me rolling my eyes: “”…one friend in the industry predicted a future without them to be so dire that Artemis III would be the last US human spaceflight of our lifetimes.”
An OK article from Ms. Klotz. Doesn’t go much beyond a brief summary of the state of affairs, with little to no analysis. Frankly, I’d expect more from AvWeek. That’s not necessarily Ms. Klotz’s problem as it is AvWeek’s.
What’s really missing is Issacman’s input. And we can’t get that officially until the Senate votes on his confirmation. Last I looked it was on the Senate’s Executive Calendar as Item #97, but no date set to vote! Committee hearings were completed April 30. What’s taking so damn long just to schedule a vote? I guess I’m just impatient. Without Issacman we only get the input from the OMB bean counters. Where the rule of thumb is the best budget is no budget.
Congress is such a disappointment right now
If only….
Imagine the life of a 3-term limited Senator.
If only…
First-term: The Rookie Term. Stay quiet, learn you leadership, carry the water.
Second-term: The Rookies form coalitions such that nothing gets done unless committee assignments and vote scheduling go their way.
Third-term: Finals exam time. Senators in this situation are desperate to leave a lasting legacy that comports to the goals of their party. Work with the 2nd term coalitionists to shape the Senate to the best of their ability. No one in their last term is going to just sit on their ass, lest the other party make hay out of it.
AvWeek is an ad-supported trade publication. Having once edited such a publication, I understand that the limits of “analysis” include not unmistakably pissing in the rice bowls of one’s advertisers – among whose ranks SpaceX is conspicuously absent. Thus, any shade thrown on SpaceX, deserved or not, will not negatively affect AvWeek’s exchequer.
Added to this, there is the matter that the subject here is far less a matter of aviation or space technology than it is simply money and politics. AvWeek, owing to both its longevity and sources of support, has, inevitably, become establishmentarian in the milieu of an industry that has largely become moribund and reflexively traditionalist.
AvWeek, thus, is about the last place one should look for hard-hitting editorializing and flashy journalistic terpsichore.
Anent scheduling of Isaacman’s Senate confirmation vote it is probably emblematic of our times that we likely have a far more accurate estimate of the date of the next Starship test flight than we do of the former.
AvWeek, thus, is about the last place one should look for hard-hitting editorializing and flashy journalistic terpsichore.
Some excellent analysis there Mr. Eagleson. “Pablum* is as pablum does”, I suppose. I used to subscribe for the photographs as much, if not more, than the stories…
As per NASA: The water is getting a little choppy and the current is picking up and I think I hear soft roaring sound coming from the distant downstream. But hey, what’s the hurry to row to shore?
As per the Senate: I’m reminded of the line from the movie Patton. His comment to Gen. Bradley, upon donning his third star in the field in North Africa: “Well, the Senate has their schedule and I have mine…”
*Go with the definition: “A diet that does not require chewing”
I used to subscribe for the photographs as much, if not more, than the stories…
Which, although true, is also the inverse of the Playboy magazine rationalization…
The success of classic-era Playboy was due to the very high quality of both the photographs and the articles/stories/interviews. The phenomenal parade of feminine perfection was certainly memorable, but so were the memoirs of Jean Shepherd and the works of George Axelrod, George MacDonald Fraser and many others.
However, I did not see this photograph in AvWeek.
Heh.
Thank you and back atcha.
Anent “pablum,” it is well to recall that there are two types of diets that require no chewing. One, as you note, is that of babies who lack teeth. But the other is that of large, savage beasts who rip great chunks off of their prey and swallow without mastication or even just swallow their prey whole. Whether the target meals be left-dominated cultural institutions or legacy defense/space contractors/institutions, the Trump 2.0 administration is acting the part of the latter.
“Historically, the development time for a crewed spacecraft is 8-10 years.”
Sample size bias.
“The question is: Is there a consensus on funding for civil space for NASA to continue, or is that going to change?”
The only consensus* is that NASA should exist. Everyone wants NASA doing different things. People upset with some proposed cuts to NASA are happy with other cuts. Everyone wants their personal interest to get extra funding.
* The other consensus is that money isn’t real but magic, everyone gets magic money so you don’t need to choose, that the source of money deserves no respect, that certain people are entitled to what isn’t theirs, and they can do whatever they want with it with no input from people who make their existence possible.
Why does NASA need to be funded for civil space to exist? Civil aviation has done fine without NACA.
NACA was formed at a time when the US had slipped far behind Europe in aviation. Over a few decades, NACA’s research in aerodynamics and engines helped the US become the world leader in aviation. They did it by building the facilities such as wind tunnels to support not just research but also manufacturers as they worked to refine their designs. NACA did all this without trying to own their own airline.
NASA still does aviation and space research. Personally, I believe their focus on missions (since Apollo) has caused them to lose their way. I want NASA to be more like NACA, focusing on developing new technology to help the US remain the world leader in civil and military space.
I agree with wanting NASA to be more like NACA, but for someone supporting NASA as it is now to make your argument, they’d have to admit that NASA is not doing those things. What new technology is Artemis advancing? Even pretending it is a new design, it has been around for over a decade.
Not related to NACA, although formed around the same time. I am informed (by Grok) that one of the bigger benefits to US aviation was the resolution of the Wrights vs Curtiss patent fights. Thanks to WWI and the pooling of patents facilitated by the US Government through the actions of the Manufacturer’s Aircraft Association.
No doubt the uncertainty produced in those legal battles hurt US aviation in that time-frame.
Also little doubt (in my mind) the role of NACA in advancing US aviation technology.
“The Musk derangement is strong in comments.”
I hate to say it, but Eric Berger’s finally been infected by it, too.
Yeah. His case isn’t comparable to cholera, as with many of the commenters, but Eric is definitely evidencing a touch of the turista these days.
He has, it was becoming evident in his last book as well. Not a severe case, but infected nevertheless.
I’m no fanboy of Musk’s, but not sharing the same world-views and preferences doesn’t detract from the incredible work he has and is doing, whether one approves of his methods or not.
Eric has had good access to Elon and SpaceX. Which does he value more? The approval of his rabid commenters or that continued access?
I don’t know that that is actually the choice on offer. Freezing out journalists strikes me as more an OldSpace than a NewSpace thing. But even if Berger’s formal access at SpaceX is curtailed in future, he will still have sources there just as he does at other aerospace companies – and at NASA – whose managements have far more reason than SpaceX to have their noses out of joint about things Berger has written.
Elon has unfollowed Eric on X at least twice after previous dustups, as Eric himself has noted. Perhaps he figures that at worst, he’ll get another temporary unfollow and concomitant lack of access to Elon….and just fall back on his other sources at the company. And after all, he has exhausted his SpaceX book possibilities for the time being.
I dunno. He’s been more critical of Elon of late than he ever was before. He might get frozen out for a long stretch.
Elon has repeatedly explained what he has done, politically, and why he has done it and at considerable length – especially on fora such as Joe Rogan’s podcast. Berger, for whatever reason, has either never bothered to imbibe Elon’s explanations or he is simply incapable of comprehending them through his conventionally liberal mental filters.
Berger is hardly alone in his seemingly utter incomprehension either. Anthony Colangelo and Jake Robins at Off-Nominal Discord spent about the last 15 minutes of their most recent podcast expressing almost identical befuddlement. Jake is Canadian and Anthony is a Jersey and Philly boy so one doesn’t have to speculate too much about the leftish “water” these two “fish” grew up in. Perhaps that’s also Berger’s problem. But it certainly seems that lifetimes of default leftism can induce genuine mental deficiencies when it comes to comprehending anyone’s politics not your own.
There is, in fact, a modest literature in the psychology and sociology fields that validates this hypothesis. Conservatives have been demonstrated to understand liberals much better than the converse, especially the self-identified “very liberal.”
Berger, for whatever reason, has either never bothered to imbibe Elon’s explanations or he is simply incapable of comprehending them through his conventionally liberal mental filters.
There was a podcast not long ago — I can’t remember which one, Berger has done so many with different peeps — where Eric was asked why he thought Elon had jumped in to Trumpian politics with both feet. And Berger, to his credit, said that from what he could make out, Elon is completely sincere in his motivations: that in Elon’s view this was a civilization-defining moment, and that if he didn’t help Trump win, we were finished as a society; and, concomitantly, that the window to get to Mars was going to snap shut. That Elon wasn’t doing it for pecuniary motivations or because he was overdosing on keto.
Of course, it was also hard to avoid the sense that Eric simply did not share that prognosis. Eric has very sensible views on space policy and a sincere appreciation for SpaceX’s achievements, but at base he’s still more or less a managerial class liberal. Or at least, liberaltarian.
Apparently I managed to miss that one – and I’ve watched Berger on a lot of podcasts. On all of them I’ve seen, Berger just seems completely befuddled about why Elon would indulge in such political “distractions.”
I’ll be happy if Artemis III is a human spaceflight, but I wouldn’t count on it.
Does anyone here have any opinions regarding whether using the SLS vehicles for Artimis 2 & 3 on unmanned missions might be useful to consider?
What I’m wondering is if the SLS hardware is already built, whether it could cost-effectively be made use of. SLS has, on paper, a great throw-weight and C3 to interplanetary trajectories, so could already-built SLS be used for high-mass direct interplanetary launches (such as envisioned for Europa Clipper on SLS)?
However, I also recall the SLS vibration issue, so unless that’s been fixed, my guess is “probably not.” Also, I have no clue on how much using an existing SLS would actually cost, so this might be unworkable in that regard too.
While I’ve been a fan of terminating SLS ever since its inception, I’d love to see a cost-effective use of the already-built vehicle sets. Might as well get some use after squandering all that money. However, unless it could be useful and cost-effective, then it’s a bad idea.
Any notional Outer Planets Flagship mission would have to start from scratch and would take a minimum of a decade – more probably two – to be ready for launch. No one is going to keep SLS around in a state of suspended animation for anywhere near that long so, no, not happening.
That isn’t to say, though, that an unmanned flight won’t figure in SLS’s limited future. My sincere hope is that Isaacman, once he has assumed office, will mandate that Artemis II be flown unmanned to prove out both the never-before-flown Orion life support suite and the efficacy of the modified re-entry profile intended to allow future use, with crew aboard, of the Orion’s currently quite wonky and substandard heat shield.
If said heat shield returns in notably better shape than did the one on the Artemis I Orion, then a third, identical heat shield, can be authorized for use on Artemis III, which would proceed as currently planned with the crew already selected for Artemis II.
There should be no additional reformulation of the Orion heat shield for the article fabricated for Artemis III. The people who overconfidently reformulated the original Apollo heat shield recipe for Orion have, frankly, not earned the trust required for such an exercise. NASA really must cease unreasonably risking the lives of crews on maiden-voyage hardware.
My sincere hope is that Isaacman, once he has assumed office, will mandate that Artemis II be flown unmanned
My sincere hope is that Isaccman, once he has assumed office, will mandate that Richard Shelby fly on Artemis II.
My one reservation about agreeing with you on that is that the Artemis II mission profile calls for the Orion craft to come back.
Yeah, our friend Mr. Wright keeps pumping that idea. But you can’t just let hardware like that sit around for several years, to say nothing of keeping the ground systems staff on retainer for all that time. The cadence of SLS is dangerously low enough as it is!
How long would a flagship mission to the Outer Planets (like, say, Uranus) take? It took Europa Clipper, the last NASA planetary science flagship mission, nine (9) years from initial design to actual launch. Of course, an ice giants orbiter will require nuclear power (probably at least two RTG’s), though I don’t think that would stretch the schedule — Cassini was done in 8 years. The real constraint is not so much NASA but how Congress pays out the funding wedge. But I think it is *conceivable* that JPL could do it in 8-9 years.
But that’s still way too long for an SLS launch. Better dial up a Starship.
Bingo.
I hate to nick Homer Hickam, a guy I love to bits, but this has been the weakness of his longstanding position that SLS should be cancelled and the currently built SLS hardware should be used to launch heavy cargo to the Moon, rather than humans. He’s right that humans have no business going up on SLS/Orion as they current stand; but he has never come up with any plausible heavy cargo that these SLS cores could launch. No such hardware exists, and it would take years to come up with any.
I suppose . . . there is the Gateway, which is now past the halfway point in fabrication. But what is the point is launching Gateway when you’ve just decided to cancel the architecture that made it necessary in the first place? Starship does not need it. Blue Moon does not need it. If you want a constant line-of-site comms relay for lunar surface missions, you can come up with more effective and far cheaper ones than a $5.3 billion mini-space station that no one actually visits.
Bingo again.
Great point on the payload time-to-build: I hadn’t thought of that, and that makes my idea utterly impractical.
I like your ideas on Artimis II flying unmanned, assuming it can be done for little added cost beyond what’s already spent.
As for SLS, I’m just not fond of the idea of putting it in a museum if existing hardware doesn’t fly. I want it put on the Capitol Mall, right outside the Capitol Building, as an eternal reminder to congress to never, ever do anything like that again.
I think SLS hardware could be used unmanned like one of the remaining Saturn Vs. Design a space station the can fly on top and put it in LEO as a starter block for a new, Russia less, station. If ending ISS is such a tragedy, then this starts the remedy while not wasting built hardware. YMMV about the word “wasting”.
The obvious candidate to take on such a job is Boeing, given that it has considerable skin in both the SLS and ISS games. But NASA shouldn’t spend a dime on such a thing as it already has several far less expensive ISS successor candidates. Boeing should do it on its own dime.
Given those terms, I would not advise holding your breath waiting for Boeing to start such a project.
Why not an upper stage that replaces Orion, etc. with a big fuel tank? Let one of the commercial players design it. But it has to use standard’s based adapters so anyone can use it. That would be the NASA requirement. Two flights, two big tanks in orbit. Better than nothing. Might even beat Starship tankers to orbit…
When I say commercial I mean New Space. We want a tank in orbit not jobs on the ground.
NewSpace, I suppose, should be flattered that you imagine it can have done everything it has done and continues to do without any employment whatsoever. Fortunately for its growing legions of jobholders, no such thing is possible.
SpaceX, alone, employs substantially more people than live in my city of birth. And a very substantial – and growing – percentage of total employment in Long Beach, CA is due to the presence there of multiple other NewSpace companies that have, hermit crab-like, taken up residence in facilities abandoned by Boeing after it acquired McDonnell-Douglas – or was that the other way around?
The Block 1 SLS is said to be capable of placing 95 tonnes into LEO. I don’t know exactly what the assumptions behind that number are but I suspect it includes the contributions of the SRBs, the core stage and the ICPS.
Assuming the ICPS is even capable, structurally, of shouldering a 95 tonne mass to orbit, if your notional tank was to sit atop the ICPS, and have no engines, then that 95 tonne max mass would include the tank mass and the propellant payload, the latter being less than 95 tonnes by the mass of the dry tank structure.
Given, also, that the ICPS is 5 meters in diameter, your notional tank should be likewise as I suspect the aerodynamics of a hammerhead design of larger maximum diameter would additionally tax the ICPS’s structural margin.
At the end of the day you will have spent $3-ish billion to put 85-ish tonnes of propellant into LEO. That’s in excess of $35K/kg. – somewhere between two and three orders of magnitude more expensive than what Starship will likely be able to do in another year or thereabouts.
And for what? What type of propellant(s) would you choose to loft? To be ultimately consumed by what vehicle? For what purpose?
Meaning no great offense, but the whole idea is daft.
The SLS-Orion stack now being assembled should be flown, unmanned, as a test of the Orion ECLSS and heat shield. If results prove satisfactory, then the last such stack can carry the crew originally assigned the Artemis II mission on the Artemis III landing mission.
If things are not satisfactory after an unmanned Artemis II, then the SLS stack currently detailed for Artemis III can, instead, be displayed in some museum or rocket garden somewhere or simply scrapped. The Artemis III mission will then proceed using a Starship variant to carry the crew from Earth’s surface out to lunar orbit – though probably not NRHO – and then return them after the HLS takes them down to the lunar surface and back up to lunar orbit.
SLS and Orion, meanwhile, will, as projects, be safely in their graves with the sod firmly tamped down above them.
Why would you even fly it fueled? It’s a depot. Let someone else do the fueling.
But the reality is we’re going to burn that money anyway if we launch Artemis II and III. To what end? To prove that a sub-functional heat shield, with the right return trajectory, didn’t kill anyone?
Your point about what to fuel it with is well taken. There isn’t a standard here. But maybe you could find a taker to either rent or buy it? You’d at least have something. Nothing that will compete with Starship of course once it comes on-line. Maybe it’s a daft idea. On par with the current Artemis architecture.
SLS is a sunk cost. Perhaps a museum piece is the best route after all. A museum to failed ideas. Like the gun revetments north of the Golden Gate Bridge at Vista Point.
BTW I don’t think Artemis III will land anything or anyone on the moon. Unless at the point of impact…
A depot would have to be scratch-designed and built whether launched empty, full or somewhere in between. And who would do that job? Boeing? How long would that take, do you suppose?
An initial Starship-based methalox depot design, meanwhile, is not only in the works but will likely fly and be proved out well within the next twelve months.
The rationale for flying Artemis II unmanned is exactly what you posit – to prove the SLS-Orion Block 1 vehicle stack won’t kill its crew if flown with one on Artemis III. I have no idea why you seem so dismissive of this purpose.
The money for the Artemis II and III hardware has already been long-spent. Actually launching the stuff will cost a bit extra, but a pittance compared to what it cost to acquire these orange monstrosities. Not much of an additional hit to insure crew safety.
HLS Starship, as part of Artemis III, will land two, and preferably three, crew on the lunar surface. There will be a soft touchdown, not an impact. This will be so because, unlike so much of the SLS-Orion hardware, the Starship HLS lander will be tested before crew are entrusted to it.
The contract with SpaceX requires at least one successful landing test before use with crew. Being a fixed-price contract, I assume any second or subsequent test required, if the first fails, would be on SpaceX’s dime as the second test of Starliner was on Boeing’s. One way or another, though, no people will be put on HLS Starship until it proves worthy of trust.
I think SLS hardware could be used unmanned like one of the remaining Saturn Vs. Design a space station the can fly on top and put it in LEO
It would take several years to build such a station, even as a dry or (God help us) wet workshop, though.
So you’d have these remaining SLS cores and all the infrastructure and their crews sitting around, dormant, for several years, waiting for that hardware to be built, with a fixed cost of at least a billion dollars just to maintain it all. I mean, assuming you could even retain the staff.
The advantage of Skylab is that it was already in the pipeline before the lunar missions wound down, and it was ready to go when Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt blasted off from Taurus-Littrow. That, and NASA and its legacy primes could move a lot faster in those days than they can now.
Here’s the best point of all. The SLS’s SRB’s have a shelf life that would work only if hardware was essentially nearly ready to go.
Museum here we come.
It would likely still save substantial money to determine what such a mission would be, and fly it on a Falcon Heavy, New Glenn (or multiples thereof) instead.
The hardware is only one part of the incredibly expensive SLS equation.
Put the SLS hardware in a museum.
A revitalized and re-armed FAA under a future Democrat regime might succeed in shutting down SpaceX in revenge for Musk’s successes, bringing US spaceflight to a halt.
That assumes the inevitability of a future Democrat administration. That, in turn, assumes some existential failure of the Trump 2.0 administration along with the ability of the Democrats to reconstitute themselves as a viable party going forward. Right now, the likelihood of either of these occurring seems very slim. The likelihood of both occurring seems effectively zero. Whomever the hell was actually President during the titular Biden regime did their level best to convert the US into a one-party totalitarianism and failed. I don’t see the US electorate giving them a second bite at that particular apple.
Sleepy Joe. The “Big Brother” of our times?
More like the Wizard of Oz of our times – except we still don’t know who was behind the curtain.
The Musk derangement is strong in comments.
Hey, it’s “Arse Techdicia”. Don’t waste your time with the comments. If it weren’t for Eric Berger and Stephen Scott, I’d not read it at all.
Wow, the comments at Ars are an eye opener. I didn’t realize there were so many openly insane people in the US willing to advertise on the internet.
Compared to the total US population there really aren’t all that many such. But Ars Technica happens to be one of the places on-line where they tend to gather.
A lot of the commenters are non-Americans.
Fair point.
FYI to all you “boffins” The Register is a lot like Ars Technica but with a British accent.
Ars Technica has always been a swamp of terminally online neurotic progressives, but Eric Berger’s articles *used* to be the one dry island of sanity, for the most part; mainly people who, like Eric, appreciated how New Space generally and SpaceX specifically were offering a vastly superior paradigm to the Apollo Cargo Cult. There were actually some very knowledgeable regulars.
But now even Eric’s combox is just a pack of Reddit-tier autists, too. It’s a shame, but it was almost certainly inevitable once Elon jumped on Team Trump. I still read Eric’s articles, but I no longer open the comment sections. Life is just too short for that.
Indeed it is.
It does give me people who I can feel a justified, righteous, deliciously smug sense of superiority over.
Beating up on Gary (and his sockpuppet accounts) gets old after a while. You can only metaphorically hang him on the HS Gym basketball goal hoop by his skivvies so many times in a week.
We used a pant belt loop over the hooks holding up the gym mats on the walls past the goal hoops…
I know that AvWeek’s status has already been well covered in this thread, so it’s no surprise to see the article treating SpaceX and Old Space differently. My favorite example is that all SpaceX hardware is treated with the greatest of doubt (“not even capable of getting to orbit”) while SLS is treated as if it delivers astronauts to the moon every other Tuesday.
He who pays the band calls the tune. Elon doesn’t pay that particular band.
Indeed.
One wonders which “friend in the industry.” That’s not called “investigative journalism,” but then how many investigative weathermen are there, nowadays.
I believe the term “journalist” implies a stenographer with a narrative. It’s hilarious to note Jake Tapper & Co. latest…
But, but, but, they LIED to us!!! How were WE supposed to know?
“Investigative” is cultivating a plethora of sources willing to tell you things the rest of us would find interesting – even if sometimes also deranged. “Journalism” is reporting the essentials of what was said, or even quoting a source exactly, without also unnecessarily identifying same and subjecting him or her to inevitable ridicule.
Berger seems to have put together the most extensive and varied roster of “snitches” in the aerospace business. And, as you already seem to know, he is also a credentialed meteorologist, so the answer to your question would appear to be, “One, for sure. Maybe more, but I don’t know who they are.”
A new article at Politico (yes, I know) last night paints a picture of…no one’s really in charge right now. Take it for what it’s worth.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/14/trump-space-policy-leadership-void-00349131
To be sure, though, if we are being honest, Trump has a number of more urgent things in his Inbox right now than reform of NASA.
Yes, he does have more urgent things to attend to right now. Civil space will keep for a bit as there is nothing civil space-related that really rises to the level of even a minor crisis at the moment. Jared will take the Administrator’s chair at NASA in short order and the NSC will be staffed up as well in due course.
The most urgent space-related matter is Golden Dome and we already have a sitting SecDef and no empty chairs at Space Force or Space Command.
The usual suspects are wandering the halls at loose ends because they have, as yet, no obvious places to try plying their usual levers.
“The most urgent space-related matter is Golden Dome and we already have a sitting SecDef and no empty chairs at Space Force or Space Command.”
Indeed.
One thing I did appreciate in Ms. Klotz’s article, however, was learning just how *based* John Logsdon is about Orion/SLS:
Whereas Wayne Hale was more disappointing than I expected. Yes, Wayne, SpaceX would agree that getting to orbit is not the hard part — they did it 134 times last year (an all-time record for anyone) with Falcons. But it makes little sense to put the largest-ever single space vehicle in orbit before you’ve actually demonstrated that you can control exactly where you land it.
Agreed. Wayne is no brain-dead NASA lifer, but it still seems to be true that if you stick him with a pin he will reflexively jump in an OldSpace direction.
It’s sad that Wayne (a sensible guy otherwise) does not seem to appreciate, even now, that Starship is a vastly more ambitious architecture than anything else ever attempted before. If all SpaceX wanted was a super heavy lift rocket…well, geez, they’d already be done now. But what SpaceX wants is a fully and rapidly reusable super heavy lift rocket, which it can build and operate at scale.
And that takes a lot more development hoops to jump through. Failure modes no one ever ran into before.
Conversely, there is an unstated undercurrent in the criticisms that NASA’s decision to go with Starship for the HLS program sustains among Irene’s interviewees. That NASA wouldn’t be hung up with so much delay if NASA had procured a smaller, less ambitious lunar lander. But there was just no way that anyone was going to come up with an operational lander before the end of the decade when they were inking the contract in spring 2021. Seriously, does anyone imagine that Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed, or Boeing(!) was going to cook up such a thing in a few years? Even with crash program funding? (Narrator: There was never any chance of crash program funding.) It defies belief.
NASA is kind of a religion with a lot of people, some of its current and former functionaries being adherents. As the late Robert A. Heinlein wrote, “It’s a pretty serious thing when a man’s religion fails him.” So the faithful will indulge themselves in some pretty impressive mental contortions to try staving off having to admit to such a failure.