Yes, this would be a much better architecture, but unfortunately, while Buzz is probably the most famous moonwalker, he’s also not taken as seriously by many in the industry.
Two comments: I’ll have to ask Eric where he gets the $1.5B/flight number for SLS. And is he proposing to do this in the ISS orbit, or at a lower inclination?
[Update a while later]
Meanwhile, Bob Zimmerman reports that NASA is preparing us for another SLS delay.
What most people don’t know about it.
As I’ve noted for years, the reason that we haven’t been able to do Apollo again is that we just barely did it the first time, and it’s extremely unlikely that the stars will align to allow it to happen again. And that is as it should be, for America. There was a very powerful sense in which Apollo was not the right thing for a country based on entrepreneurialism and free enterprise to be doing.
I’m reading Roger Launius’s new book, in which he talks about four perspectives of Apollo. I noted to him privately that there was a fifth, that he didn’t address:
I felt a little left out. I think I represent a fifth perspective, in that I believe that Apollo was both necessary and not a waste of money for what it accomplished (a major non-military victory in the Cold War), but that it set us back in human spaceflight for decades (and continues to do so, as witness the current ongong Artemis fiasco).
He didn’t disagree.
I thought at the time that it was a bad idea for the Pentagon to push for consolidation in the 90s, and in particular for the FTC to approve the sale of McDonnell Douglas to Boeing. History has proven me (and others) correct. The article doesn’t talk about space, but NASA’s procurement practices have been as bad as the Pentagon’s, in terms of encouraging and rewarding poor performance.
In the wake of the Potemkin abort test of Orion, Eric Berger has a reality check.
[Update a few minutes later]
This is a perfect example of the problem:
Even as NASA needs to be spending money on a lunar lander, it has been directed by Congressional authorizations to spend more money on the SLS rocket. To that end, NASA announced last week a $383 million cost-plus contract to build a second mobile launcher, to be used for the Block 1B version of the Space Launch System rocket, which has a more powerful upper stage. This rocket is at least five years away from launching, will cost billions to develop, and is not currently used in any of NASA’s plans for the 2024 landing.
As Bob Zubrin often says, they don’t want to spend money to do things; they want to do things to spend money.
[Update a few more minutes later]
Light/non-existing posting because since boarding red eye to DC Tuesday night, I’ve been attending the Space Enterprise Summit at the State Department.
Why it’s better than Apollo.
For one thing, it’s more sustainable. And it will accomplish much more. Whenever kids (i.e., people less than 50) tell me they envy me that I saw men walk on the moon, I tell them that I envy them for all the much more exciting things in space they’ll see (assuming that we don’t get life extension).
Clark Lindsey has quite a round up of links from this week.
[Update at noon]
What is the role of the Space Force? A long essay from (USAF Colonel — ret) Peter Garretson.
Clark Lindsey has a news roundup.
And NASA (as in Gerst) isn’t happy with GAO’s (accurate) “unnecessarily negative” criticism of its and Boeing’s performance.
[Noon update]
Muilenburg responds with typical BS:
“The first rocket is now about 80% assembled, and we’re going through the detailed system integration,” he said. “These are very complex, sophisticated machines, so the technology itself is a challenge. I think it’s manageable. It’s work we know how to do. But it’s tough, challenging work, and we have to do it in a way that ensures safety in the end.”
Muilenburg said having consistent political and funding support for such a big space project was at least as challenging.
“We’ve seen that to date on the Space Launch System,” he said. “If we’re going to get back to the moon by 2024, we can do that, but we can’t if we don’t have stable, consistent support and funding. So the political and funding side of this, I would say, is actually the greater risk.”
The notion that SLS hasn’t had “consistent political support and funding” is beyond mendacious.
While I think that we could do a lunar return for far less than NASA estimates, if allowed to do so without having to use SLS/Orion, or the Gateway, I certainly agree with the second point that Wayne Hale (new head of the NASA Advisory Council) makes, as he takes more than one page from my book.