But congress couldn't let the money river go, so they rescued Constellation and turned it into "Constellation 2.0: Even Dumber". Instead of actually having a mission it was literally just 'continue to build more or less the same thing' but without any mission.
This resulted in SLS and continued Orion. And for years they didn't have a mission. Literally just build to keep existing contractors.
So this whole architecture is literally just 30 years of gigantic waste of money without any result. The resulting rocket sucks, is incredibly weak and has a terrible launch rate. To even match the Saturn V it would take another 5-10 years and cost another 10 billion.
So really, I don't like Trump. But finally get rid of these terrible milestone that have been holding NASA back for literally 25 years is worth any short inconvenience and will improve NASA in the long term.
The worse parts are the science cuts.
After 8 tries starship hasn't successfully gotten its second stage to orbit. The starship-based plan is the most bonkers part of Artemis. They haven't gotten the "easy" parts done (getting to orbit and getting back again) and haven't even started on the "hard" parts (in-flight refueling, a launch cadence to overcome boil-off, actually landing on the moon and taking off again, etc).
Energiya rocket, a Saturn-V class launcher which flew twice in 1980-s, deliberately was not getting to orbital speed, for the same reason - don't need to pollute the orbit in the case deorbiting burn fails. Starship has a disadvantage that it's not that easy to release the payload, so Starship has first to get to full orbit, and then take time to release the payload, and then deorbit, and we can have problems there with what to do with Starship which malfunctioned on the deorbiting stage. However to just get to orbit Starship needs to work a few seconds longer than it did already several times - a rather small change.
So it's not quite accurate to accuse them "they didn't get the easy part of getting to orbit done".
The Starship isn't ready now in expendable form: during the last two tests, it blew up during the initial burn.
Constellation and friends were terrible programs long before SpaceX even existed.
Investment in distributed launch and refueling is what should have been the bases of all planning since the 90s.
Almost anything policy-adjacent gets shut down almost immediately even if it has a strong tech or science angle.
This is the stupidest way to do this. We’re going to finish developing it and then throw it away?
SLS is incredibly expensive to operate, so even if it is 'finished' its cost are completely unreasonable. Keeping the program alive alone is incredibly expensive, and then you barely get any launches out of it.
Lunar Gateway isn't finished and it would require lots of money, launches and a large operational budget to finish it.
But you are right, all these should have never been develop and canceling them earlier is better then later. But now is better then later.
kemotep•9mo ago
Trade deals, cybersecurity initiatives, election integrity programs, and this, the Artemis program created by Trump’s administration in 2017.
We are betting the farm on SpaceX now. All in on Starship, throwing away the only component of the return to the moon that was proven to actually work. If the next IATF ends in RUD then Starship probably isn’t getting to the Moon any faster than when it was part of Artemis.
sidewndr46•9mo ago
The main reason we haven't gone back to the moon is it not really that appealing. There were some valid scientific reasons for going to the moon originally and the final Apollo mission took a geologist. Beyond that, there isn't much reason to be there. It's substantially less inhabitable than Antarctica and we don't bother living there in a permanent fashion, although it does notionally have a population there 365 days a year.
Cancelling manned moon missions would potentially free up more resources for robotic missions, which NASA and their partner agencies have an excellent track record of.
huxley•9mo ago
kjkjadksj•9mo ago
kemotep•9mo ago
panick21_•9mo ago
They can say that, but the reality is once Apollo and Saturn V is gone, and you have Shuttle, all deep space exploration, moon or otherwise, is dead.
sidewndr46•9mo ago
It's like saying that since my truck is rated to tow 7000 lbs, any discussion around towing 8000 lbs is impossible. Using shuttle hardware to get beyond LEO requires compromises and design changes, but it isn't impossible. The RS-25 on paper appears to have a higher specific impulse than the F-1 engine. The Saturn V rocket family isn't some once in a civilization accomplishment. It's mostly just unique in that the safety record of it is really, really good.
panick21_•9mo ago
The Shuttle bound the US to LEO because while the Shuttle was active, its upkeep used up most of the budget and large projects to use that hardware for something else wasn't likely.
And even if you went that route, the cost of such a redesign, has has been seen multiple times now, is so expensive and impractical that it cost more then designing something new.
> The RS-25 on paper appears to have a higher specific impulse than the F-1 engine.
Comparing individual parts of the architecture on one specific state isn't a useful analysis.
> The Saturn V rocket family isn't some once in a civilization accomplishment.
Nobody said it was.
Even in 2011 every analysis NASA did suggest that a upgraded Saturn V was going to be cheaper and result in a far more powerful rocket far faster and with much lower long term operation cost. Despite this analysis NASA selected SLS because congress clearly wrote into legislation that existing contractors had to be selected.
Feel free to look up those NASA studies. Many years ago on reddit I compiles a long post with all the sources for that stuff but I would have to look for it.
sidewndr46•9mo ago
WorldMaker•9mo ago
It would also be a place to test our knowledge gained from maintaining a human presence in ISS further out from LEO and further away from easy repairs.
It's certainly easy to dislike Gateway or think it was wasteful, but it was also driving the scientific ambitions of the whole project, and pushing SLS to not just be a worse Saturn V and Orion to not just be Apollo 2: Electric Boogaloo (and pushing competitors like SpaceX and Blue Origin to try for some of those same high-minded, scientifically ambitious requirements).
JumpCrisscross•9mo ago
Yup. The Moon is a laboratory for advancing our understanding of low-gravity colonisation. We don’t, for example, know how to do trauma medicine in space, accommodate anyone who isn’t in perfect physique or sustainably grow food.
That said, you don’t need a gateway to do that science. Just a Moon base.
WorldMaker•9mo ago
Even in (harder) science fiction, a station like Gateway is almost always a first step towards building a first moon base, because orbiting in a bunch of cramped Apollo-style "command modules" is a bit silly if you can build a mini-hotel waystation with a shared orbit instead and in theory save on extra modules.
The Apollo-style was considered wasteful in the long term at the time, too, it was just easier and faster in the short term. The predictions that Apollo would not lead to a continued presence on or even near the Moon were rather right on the nose. We did the short term version once already, I can't fault Nasa for trying to do the real long term route if we're going back. (Because yeah, let's go back for good, this time.)
wpm•9mo ago
Apollo also generated little science that couldn’t be done by machine. We have returned samples from comets, doing so from the Moon isn’t that hard comparatively aside from delta-v requirements.
The Space Shuttle? Massive waste of money just to put some satellites and telescopes up in orbit. A massively overcomplicated, and dangerous vehicle system that cost way more in the long run than the “disposable” rockets it was meant to replace.
None of it matters. The frontier on Earth is all but gone. There is no line to tow, no limit to push against and hang your ass over the ragged edge.
But doing so forces us to figure out solutions to problems we would’ve never faced otherwise, solutions that often have incredible utility back home. Artificial limbs. Insulin pumps. Camera phones. Aerogel and memory foam. Photovoltaics. CAT Scans. The list goes on. Innovations that either started or aided by the problem of making it lightweight/storable/safe for space flight, both manned and unmanned.
The list of problems that will need to be solved in materials science, computer science, rocketry, mechanical engineering, etc etc, of putting humans on the Moon for long term stays isn’t even written yet. It is the only worthy effort of our society to pursue it, after and during ensuring everyone is fed, housed, and educated here. Otherwise, what the hell are we doing here? Toiling away, making the funny numbers in the computer go up?
The universe has made it clear that if you aren’t busy growing, you’re busy dying.
tekla•9mo ago
When hasn't that been true? Artemis is useless for landing on the moon without Starship. BO has a contract but thats still years in the future and considered secondary.
panick21_•9mo ago
The reality is, SLS/Orion don't do much that is useful while together consuming a huge part of the budget. It has consumed huge parts of the budget for 10+ years and would do so for another 15-20 years.
The real bet is on commercial launch in general. And that is a really good bet given how the launch market has developed.
Its also a bet on staging in LEO so you can use existing vehicles to get there.
> Starship probably isn’t getting to the Moon any faster than when it was part of Artemis.
The goal should not be to rush somewhere. The goal should be to develop a space flight program that is best for the next couple decades.