It is insane that NASA is going ahead with the Artemis II swing-by mission with the current hardware. But then the whole Orion program has been insane. The Apollo program did testing right. Many automated test flights of uncrewed but full production spacecraft to iron out problems. Lockheed Martin (Orion’s manufacturer) and NASA are not doing anything remotely like that. Every Orion capsule going up is a different configuration. The uncrewed Artemis I (the one with the heat shield problems) didn’t have its life support system full active. Artemis II will be the very first Orion vehicle to have both a crew and a fully active never-previously-tested-in-space life support system. Artemis III will be the first with a docking port, which will be tested in space for the first time at the Lunar Gateway space station and will also have crew aboard.
The biggest problem now is not the cost ($4 billion per SLS/Orion flight!) or timeframe (it takes 18 months roughly to build a new SLS rocket!). The biggest problem is that the 3rd stage of the 1st version of SLS, Boeing’s ICPS or “Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage”, was designed as a stop-gap until the final 3rd stage design, the Exploration Upper Stage or EUS was ready. Boeing built three ICPS stages for the first 3 Artemis missions and then scrapped the production line to save money on maintenance. Boeing can’t build any more ICPS stages to allow for additional testing. And the EUS is way behind schedule and way over budget, as you might predict.
Boeing is currently assembling the specific SLS rocket to be used for Artemis II. There’s been an unusual amount of urgency on this starting about a month ago. The rumours are that Boeing and Lockheed Martin and pro-SLS groups within NASA are desperately trying to show progress on SLS/Orion to discourage their fully-justified cancellation. Gateway, Orion, and SLS were specifically designed by the US senate to need each other, to make any of them politically harder to cancel. Cancel one and you cancel them all because any two are useless without the third. Orion is an expensive undertested shitshow. SLS is an expensive technological dead-end. Gateway will be in a weird-ass quasi-orbit that’s only needed because the underpowered Block 1 SLS can’t lift the overweight Orion vehicle into a proper lunar orbit.
Further rumours are that the US senate is in talks with Trump and his allies to cancel SLS/Orion/Gateway, and as part of the agreement, they’ll move US Space Force Command to Huntsville, Alabama. This would actually be a very good thing.
very interesting thank you for a comprehensive write up.
i stopped following this mission and it’s hardware a year ago after my initial “lunar space station would be pretty cool but it should be in a really close orbit to be useful”
Unfortunately lunar space stations aren’t practical because they would absolutely be rad to see. The Moon’s mass isn’t even distributed, it’s filled with “mascons”, mass concentrations. Their effects on lunar gravity will decay a lunar orbit real fast. Any inert satellite is likely to crash in just a few years.
I’ve often though the Moon is a poor choice for human exploration anyway. We’re close enough for effectively real-time radio control of probes. China just proved how to do a significant sample-return mission with current technology.
China’s sample return missions are explicitly steps on their well thought out plan towards human habitation and ISRU on the moon, though. If they can dig up anything worth lifting (ice/fuel especially) it’s an easy W because the well is just so much shallower than Earth’s.
They’re also getting good practice with long term stationkeeping in lunar orbit with Queqiao. It’s not just for comms, the intention as I understand it is to use it for lunar GNSS too, which requires a very precisely known orbit.
that’s why i think a “space station” with some kind of electrical propulsion would be viable. but yes in general remote exploration would be better. i’m most excited about the recent evidence of a relatively long lived, ancient lunar atmosphere. i want to know more and i think that will require geological sampling, drilling, etc.
The US back to doing what they were most proficient at: killing astronauts
Scrapping a production line after making three is fully deranged behavior, but then so is designing an “interim” stage and flying humans on it untested. I literally cannot imagine a more wasteful human space exploration system than SLS.
Making something worse than the Shuttle program is some kind of achievement.
NASA says “If it’s Boeing, they ain’t going.”
Freaking funny AF if China laps us in the space race.
spoiler
They won’t.
Nasa, sending you my votes and prayers.
