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
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.
“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.
“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.
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.
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.