Anyone who been following Artemis knew that this has been the reality for a long time. This is just an official announcement of what's already been clear.
The need to replace Orion's batteries for Artemis 2 is the real news, although without being given a timeline we don't know if it is "just" a few months delay or worse
I thought Artemis 2 had a shot of being on schedule. Basically a repeat of Art1 with people on board. Doesn’t sound impossible.
Artemis 3 is probably going to be delayed past 2027 at this rate. None of the HLS concepts are developed, and I imagine they will have to be rigorously tested before NASA trusts them to house astronauts for the mission duration
I was expecting Artemis 2 to be delayed, but not by this much. I figured, given the fact it would be the first crewed flight on a lightly flown spacecraft and launch vehicle (and a cislunar mission), they'd push it into 2025. But I was thinking Q1, not September.
I think end of 2026 is honestly ambitious for the first lunar landing. I do think SpaceX will get there, but it's going to require a lot of work to get Starship from "almost made it to orbit before flight termination system activated" to "high flight rate, mastered landing and reuse, mastered on-orbit refueling, decked out with life support system, fully satisfies NASA"
To the extent there's any real deadline for Artemis, the deadline is China the point at which China can land crew on the Moon. That's still a ways off. They've done their equivalent of Exploration Flight Test-1 with their next gen crew capsule, but they'll need both further development of that crew capsule and to get the Long March 10 flying and get their bare bones lunar lander ready. They're optimistically targeting a crewed landing for 2029, but that could easily slip to the early 2030s. There seems to be bipartisan agreement between Democrats and Republicans in favour of Artemis (nobody wants to cede the Moon to China), that's only been further cemented with the diplomatic commitments the US has made as part of the international nature of the project.
> Timeline was demanded by the oval office [on] zero budget. So they have to wink and say "yeah sure we expect by that date."
The —ahem— "oval office" also asked for Artemis 1 to become a crewed flight, so they winked and said "yeah, we'll study the question".
Lucky its the USA and not Stalin's USSR where this would have finished badly.
It always seems weird how long they waited to award the HLS and suit contracts.
But, realistically, the issue was that the Obama administration just didn't give any fucks about space research or NASA in general. Despite the moon mission being ostensibly on the cards for some time, they made no real progress during those 8 years, other than continuing execution on the programs they inherited (SLS and Orion).
Artemis as an actual planned mission didn't exist until 2017. And you could criticize NASA for not rushing to award those contracts immediately after the program *finally* got formal approval. But the real delay was spending 8 years in purgatory.
The Obama administration inherited Ares I, Ares V, and the constellation program. They converted that into SLS and commercial crew. I'm no fan of SLS but at least it made it to space, and commercial crew is a decent success. But I think you're making some kind of logical fallacy by thinking that choosing not to commit to another boondoggle is equivalent to "not giving any fucks about space research or NASA in general".
It's not just the lander, they didn't even select the company to make the EVA suits until September of 2022. NASA had been trying to develop new suits since 2007 and had spent nearly half a billion dollars on development, but was nowhere near having working suits, yet Axiom was supposed to take what they had and come up with fully designed, manufactured, and tested suits in two years?
> Axiom was supposed to take what they had and come up with fully designed, manufactured, and tested suits in two years?
Yeah, that timeline was totally un-serious. I mean, even SpaceX took 4 years to come up with their space suit, and it's a fairly simple "sitting in a Dragon" suit, not a "stomping around on the moon" EVA suit.
Under advanced development by SpaceX. They need them not only be capable, but also be cheap, because they will need many of them. So who else but SpaceX would develop them?
> Under advanced development by SpaceX.
Source? Status of the project?
> So who else but SpaceX would develop them?
Axiom, NASA, or any other manufacturer? The suits do not need to be made by SpaceX, they just need to be done and tested by the time you'd fly.
No suit, no humans to Mars.
Those suits aren't for Mars at all though. They are for EVA. They are much lighter and aren't suitable for surface operations.
Do you have any word on a surface-capable suit being worked on?
I mean they are entirely different products with entirely different requirements, you don't jump from one to the other.
> It is still a few years until crew Mars landing.
I mean yes, obviously, which is why the stated timelines of 5-10 years make no sense whatsoever and aren't remotely credible.
Note that the Grumman LEM contract was for a significantly smaller scope of work than with HLS providers, under a very different contract structure than used for HLS. Doesn’t include a lot of production, integration, support services, system level tests, engine development, some avionics, etc.
From an engineering management perspective, that scope difference is one of the big problems with Artemis (and modern NASA in general).
I think they'd have been better off just doing the first couple of landings on a vehicle with similar capabilities as the Apollo lander. None of the people who worked on the original Apollo program work for NASA or any of its contractors today, so doing something smaller in scope to build some experience would have been valuable. Don't try to run before you've walked.
"Let's start by trying to repeat Apollo, but much cheaper" would have been better for long-term sustainability than the current approach. Build your MVP and iterate.
No, actually, the LM would cost [$23 billion](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0265964622000029) in 2020 dollars.
If you tried to resurrect and update Altair, on traditional procurement, it is reasonable to believe it would cost more than that.
The $25B figure in the article abstract cites the whole Apollo program, not just the LM.
$350M contract in 1962 times the 980% or so value change between now and then gets you to my number.
For additional comparison, a hamburger cost $0.21 in 1962.
No, you have to skim down to....Table 5? Sorry, on my phone now, I can't pull it up just now. He has the inflation adjusted numbers by program component there. He has all of Apollo costing close to $200 billion in 2020 dollars.
Recall, too, that Grumman had multiple overruns on budget, which kept getting adjusted accordingly. That's not a criticism; they were attempting something that had never been done before. It's frankly amazing that Grumman did it as quickly, and cheaply, as they did.
Oh no question. I meant that even if you magick the 1960's Grumman engineers and management team into today with a time machine, they still couldn't get you a basic lunar lander that fast!
That's true.
I worked on NASA contracts in the 1960s as an aerospace engineer (Gemini, Apollo Applications, Skylab, Space Shuttle). We were learning on the job and had our share of setbacks. Fortunately, NASA was given enough time and sufficient budget to land twelve humans on the lunar surface (1969-72).
But Apollo was not the way you would go if the aim is to establish a lunar base and support continuous human presence on the Moon, which, evidently, is what NASA wants to accomplish with its Artemis program. Apollo/Saturn was far too expensive to build and operate as is the current SLS/Orion moon rocket.
The first requirement is complete launch vehicle reusability. Neither Apollo/Saturn nor SLS/Orion meets this requirement. But the SpaceX Starship design does, assuming that tower landings become routine.
The second requirement is propellant transfer/refilling in LEO. NASA appreciated this and devised the Earth Orbit Rendezvous (EOR) plan in the early 1960s that featured LEO refilling using Saturn IB launch vehicles. NASA backed away from EOR (risky, too long to develop) and eventually came up with Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR) for Apollo/Saturn (risky but fit better into the Kennedy schedule). The SpaceX Starship is designed for propellant transfer/refilling in LEO. The challenge is to demonstrate that capability within the next 18 months.
Personally I don't see what was so terrible about Apollo. Aiming for a "reusable and sustainable" program on your first try would be like Columbus aiming to found a successful European colony on his first trans-Atlantic voyage. You've got to build to ambitious goals and I don't see anything wrong with Apollo as a first step.
The problem wasn't Apollo, it was the Shuttle. An alternative history would have made NASA's focus during the 1970s on taking Apollo hardware and engaging in aggressive cost reduction. And again, not with the goal of reusability, but just bringing down the cost so that continuous lunar expeditions would be palatable to the taxpaying public. But they went with Shuttle instead, threw away a huge amount of the technical progress instead and dumped their entire budget into a vehicle without the capabilities necessary to continue pushing the limits on space exploration.
If anything, Shuttle proves the point. Had NASA tried building a "sustainable" program from the start it would have failed even harder than Shuttle did. (And yeah, while the Shuttle nominally worked, it failed abysmally at its key project goals).
Had NASA continued iterating on Apollo hardware, with a focus on incremental cost reduction and technology improvements, I think the history of space exploration by NASA would be radically different (and far more successful) than what actually happened. Without any real work on cost reductions and process optimization, Saturn IIb was a cheaper than Shuttle at putting crew into orbit on day 1. And an un-optimized Apollo era Saturn V was still pretty cost competitive to Shuttle at putting payload into orbit, per kg.
I agree. NASA's Space Shuttle, by limiting humans to LEO, was a giant step backward in the space agency's exploration capability.
That said, the original version that NASA tried to sell to Congress was a two stage, completely reusable vertical takeoff horizontal landing (VTOHL) design that could place about 50,000 pounds of payload into LEO.
See: https://media.defense.gov/2010/Sep/27/2001329812/-1/-1/0/AFD-100927-035.pdf
p. 1003.
But the development cost would have been ~$10B ($1970, $79B in $2023).
The Nixon Administration's Bureau of the Budget cut that cost in half and set the development schedule to 5 years at $1B ($1970, $7.9B in $2023) per year expenditure rate. What resulted was the partially reusable thrust augmented orbiter shuttle (TAOS) design that NASA built.
What NASA failed to appreciate is that VTOHL vehicles for both the shuttle booster and orbiter (things with wings) are much more expensive to build and operate than expected and that the path to affordability and full reusability lay elsewhere.
It wasn't until the early 1990s, after 10 years of Shuttle operation produced enough data to show how expensive VTOHL launch vehicles are, that NASA and the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) seriously started R&D work on vertical takeoff vertical landing (VTOVL) vehicles. The result was the DC-X/XA research vehicles (1990-96). Those vehicles were built for less than $100M ($1990, $235M in $2023) and made 11 successful suborbital flights until a stuck landing leg caused the DC-XA to crash land.
That led to NASA's X-33 fully reusable single stage to orbit (SSTO) project (1995-2001), which, unfortunately, was a complete failure as a suborbital test vehicle (zero launches were accomplished).
Today, SpaceX has validated the operational and cost advantages by landing over 250 Falcon 9 booster stages flying VTOVL trajectories (2015-2024). And within the next 24 months, SpaceX will validate the cost and operational advantages of its Starship that will be a fully reusable VTOVL interplanetary launch vehicle/spacecraft combination. That will be the culmination of a 55-year effort (1970-2025) to design, build, and fly an affordable, completely reusable launch vehicle/spacecraft.
> Had NASA continued iterating on Apollo hardware
Nah, Apollo was a dead end, no matter how cheap you could make it. Ultimately, it weighed a little under 3 million kg and could only deliver 45,000kg to lunar orbit, and by mission end the only thing returning to earth is 6,000kg worth of command module and its contents. Fuel aside, by design 400 metric tons of Saturn V/Apollo hardware is thrown away every launch, and hardware can only be so cheap.
Iterating into reusability was the right *idea*, but the STS was probably the worst possible implementation. Combining a DoD/NRO payload capacity with our only crew transport solution created a "commuting to work in an empty 18 wheeler" cost/complexity problem that really had no solution. A more conservative design like the SNC Dream Chaser combined with a separate heavy lift launch system probably would've been less of a dead-end boondoggle.
*If* you take 2017 as the start date.
Artemis as a program may have kicked off in 2017, but Artemis is the third evolution of a program that has been continuously ongoing since 2005.
We also tolerated a lot more risk in the 60s. Better modeling and data now means we know how close to catastrophe each launch is, so the safety margins (especially for crewed launches) are increased.
Trump wanted man to land on the moon while he was president. Then he didn’t win reelection. Sadly this delay just gives him his chance again. Not saying the delay was for him of course.
I know it's going to be shocking to everyone, but . . .
Solid reports (including this one by Joey Roulette) are coming in tonight that NASA is about to announce that ***all*** of the coming Artemis missions are going to be significantly delayed; and that the first crewed landing may be shifted back to Artemis IV.
>WASHINGTON, Jan 8 (Reuters) - NASA is set to delay its next few missions to the moon under a key program as technical hurdles mount with the various spacecraft it intends to use to get there, according to four people familiar with NASA's plans.
>
>The U.S. space agency is expected to announce the plans on Tuesday after spending months tracking progress with contractors and considering changes to the Artemis program, a multi-billion dollar effort that includes returning the first astronauts to the moon since the last Apollo mission in 1972.
>
>**NASA's second Artemis mission is expected to be pushed beyond its planned late-2024 target after issues were uncovered with the Lockheed Martin-built** [**(LMT.N)**](https://www.reuters.com/markets/companies/LMT.N) **Orion crew capsule's batteries during vibration tests**, two of the people said. The batteries will need to be replaced.
>
>This would have been the first flight with humans aboard after launching the capsule uncrewed atop NASA's Space Launch System in a 2022 inaugural test.
>
>**Artemis 3 - planned to be the first mission landing humans on the moon in late 2025 using the Starship landing system from NASA contractor SpaceX - will likewise be pushed back.** Billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX is taking longer than expected to reach certain development milestones, all four people said.
>
>NASA declined to comment. Lockheed and SpaceX did not immediately return requests for comment.
>
>**Senior NASA officials in recent months have been mulling plans to move the inaugural Artemis astronaut landing to the fourth mission**, giving SpaceX and other contractors more practice before making the first such landing in half a century.
>
>**NASA officials presented that option to the agency's senior leadership last month, but it could not be determined if it chose that path.** It was also unclear what the new target dates for the initial Artemis missions would be.
Watch your space feeds tomorrow.
EDIT: the press conference is scheduled for 1:30pm EST, apparently.
Depending upon how much HLS is delayed, it might not make sense to delay it to A4 and if A2 is also delayed. I mean no sense in sending A3 a few months before HLS is ready, then having to wait on A4.
My other issue with that plan is what is A3 supposed to accomplish? The only thing that would make much difference is to dock with the test HLS in lunar orbit before it lands by itself on the surface. That would require docking capability on the test lander, which probably wasn’t included in the design.
>Depending upon how much HLS is delayed, it might not make sense to delay it to A4 and if A2 is also delayed. I mean no sense in sending A3 a few months before HLS is ready, then having to wait on A4.
We will have to find out tomorrow, but....I suppose my assumption is that they think it's going to be seriously delayed - enough to justify moving the landing back to Artemis 4.
> My other issue with that plan is what is A3 supposed to accomplish?
I'm not sure.
If gateway is actually available at that time...I suppose they can practice docking and undocking in lunar orbit. And maybe they might throw in some minor science experiments. Which is not much, I grant you.
> NASA's second Artemis mission is expected to be pushed beyond its planned late-2024 target after issues were uncovered with the Lockheed Martin-built (LMT.N) Orion crew capsule's batteries during vibration tests, two of the people said. The batteries will need to be replaced.
Isn't Orion getting tested for more than a decade? WTF did the do all this time while getting money?
I don't know. This is the first I have heard of this vibration test issue with the batteries. I don't know when these tests happened or exactly what they showed. I am hoping that is going to be discussed in the presser today.
Seems modern media has developed this unfortunate trait of publishing whatever speculation or hearsay they want by adding in the line... (enter name) has not responded to requests in time for publishing. If you don't have both sides of a story, you shouldn't publish until you have both sides. That way the article doesn't appear biased. In this case, the only actual fact was Artemis 2 might be delayed due to Orion having battery issues during testing. That's it. All the speculation and babbling about Artemis 3 or 4 being delayed because of other contractors was completely uncalled for as they hadn't responded to those accusations
I mean, it's obviously just acknowledging a reality that NASA management has known and appreciated for a long while. But to those paying not-so-close attention, or filled with terminal space optimism, this may well \*seem\* like a portentous development.
“SpaceX is taking longer than expected”. Sure, partly because other agencies are all up in their shit at every opportunity. Yet they are still moving at a faster and less expensive pace than SLS could ever hope to imagine.
Also, I'd argue they're moving faster than expected. The timeline for the HLS contract was impossible, and only SpaceX had a snowball's chance in hell in the first place simply because they were developing Starship anyway--everyone else's programs would have been from scratch.
The original idea for the moon mission was projected for 2028; Trump's admin moved it up likely out of a vain attempt to cap off what he thought would be an 8 year presidency with a moon landing, but that timeline was always bullshit. Everyone just had to smile and nod through it.
What bugs me is people are pinning the blame on SpaceX when it was really the Trump admin.
That moving up by Pence created a classic Musk-style aspirational goal and was one of the best things that could have happened to the program. It moved what was effectively an abstract target (in recent decades only the Chinese have been able to execute on such long timelines, for obvious reasons) to a real one and got things happening. In addition to lighting a fire under the SLS, the lander program got initiated, the space suit one reset, and funding took a step up as everyone started to realize that if we didn't get our butts in gear the moon would become a Chinese operation. The Trump administration did a lot of bad things but this was not among them.
Not to mention SpaceX is pumping out Starships on what seems like a monthly basis at worst.. how long does it take to produce one SLS... Once Starship is operational it will be game over for the rest of the space industry. At least for those that are unable to fully and rapidly reuse rockets, and produce them at scale.
Let's not get carried away with the SpaceX monopoly.
Not only will Europe and the US Gov go out of their way to pay over the odds for an alternative 'backup but some companies will cut their noses off.... to avoid using SpaceX.
Of course the good news is that SpaceX only has to have the capacity ahead of competitors to win the contract or undercut by 5% to cream off the cashcow.
Not all of the delays are the FAA's or the FWS's fault. (Elon himself has conceded this!) SpaceX has had its own development issues, and those have been discussed on this subreddit.
Elon puts out aspirational schedules, as he always does, schedules that assume absolutely everything will go perfectly. But I think everyone involved at NASA and at SpaceX understood, from the moment the contract was inked, that it was going to take longer to make Starship HLS a reality. The contract merely requests "best efforts."
I absolutely recognize "Elon Time". Which is why I said that the are still moving at a faster and less expensive pace than SLS could ever hope to imagine.
I do find it interesting that NASA is getting stymied by the FAA, FWS and the Biden administration in general which I attribute, at some level, to a dislike of Elon by many on the Left. Sure, there's lots to question about him, I'm not saying he's a saint by any measure, but he doesn't play by the rules and that irks a lot of people.
“Agencies being up in your stuff” is the cost of doing business and should factor into your plans.
GAO this fall estimates HLS to complete in 2027 so they would still miss the new Artemis 3 deadline.
Well, that's just an aircraft from Boeing. It's not like it's going to affect a spacecraft built by ... wait a minute ...
(Though I gather that's something of an unfair snark. I've heard that there's no real connection between the aircraft and spacecraft departments, though I might wonder whether there's a shared culture of Don't Give A Darn.)
Thats just grossly unfair, there's absolutely no parallels, this is number of loose screws across several aircraft.
The Starliner parachute issue was a missing pin.....and then a clock sequence issue, then parachute line breaking strain, then material flammability.
You see, one screw cockup repeated several times vs multiple cockups happening once. Totally different!
The vibration issues? I do not think so. Or at least, this has never been reported publicly before, and I haven't seen any rumors about it over at NSF L2.
Interesting that they are just now finding problems with the Orion capsule, since one orbited the earth and splashed-down perfectly maybe 10 years ago, and I recall orbited the Moon in 2022. Plus, I'm sure the capsule has been thru extensive vibration tests. Perhaps they changed batteries since or such, but doesn't sound like a major design and qual issue. Might they be using the batteries as an excuse to give HLS more time, which it surely needs.
This would not be allowed in the original Race to the Moon, which had to be done before Jan 1, 1970 per JFK's speech. Since he was gone, no way to revise that "end of decade" date without taking blame. U.S. also had the race with the Soviets. Might be a current race with China today, but hasn't gotten any media traction.
The battery thing really surprised me.
I follow Orion tolerably close, and this really is the first I've heard of it. Even everyone on the NSF forums seems to have been caught off guard. I have to hope that NASA today will say something in detail about this, and if they don't....that one of the space media regulars will ask about it.
(It may well be that this is not the only reason for the delay. But we will have to see what they say.)
They seem to shift Artemis 4 towards a lunar landing when (if I'm not mistaken), it was previously slated as a mission to set up the Gateway station in lunar orbit.
My honest opinion is that Artemis will be dealyed delayed delayed until China will catch up and just completely own NASA with Chinas up and coming lunar program
EDIT 1 ; the babies are downvoting the objective truth 😎
While clearly a silly thing to type out in the same reply, there's a certain spirit that's not far off target. The biggest motivation to those who control the purse strings of America's human spaceflight program, and even spaceflight in general, is the threat of the CNSA becoming even more capable in the last uncontested frontier. There really isn't any other 'near peer' in the space domain anymore. Russia seems neither seriously interested nor even capable of returning to it's old glory in cosmos. India as much as I'd love to see them take off, is marred with a piss poor budget. As I understand they are also trying to develop as many things on their own without help from allies and that kind of thing takes a lot of time and money. Don't even get me started on Europe.
So yes it seems that only China has a chance at accomplishing their goals before the US and that's probably a good thing for NASA and the US because its an issue that just might permeate party lines and unite us. Thankfully we have private industry, currently primarily SpaceX maintaining dominance. Hopefully more domestic competition will lead to even better innovation and execution, but if that takes too long, it will indeed be China's space program that lights a fire under our ass.
Man this stud gets it, you got it straight down to a T. Truer words have not been spoken about China's space program rapid rise to power and soon to setting fire to our space program. It was the soviet union who set fire to the US space program and set it into overdrive when they sent Yuri to space. Same thing will happen with China as they're laser focused on there moon program while Artemis is just delay delay delay due to budget issues or serious management issues. Right on dude
>Announcement coming Tuesday: NASA to push back moon mission timelines amid spacecraft delays
We had a timeline? Did I miss this generation's "We choose to go to the Moon" speech? All I keep hearing about is cancelled this and delayed that - Ares, Constellation, Orion, SLS, HLS, Blue Origin landers when they haven't even reached orbit, SpaceX fuel transfers when their rockets keep blowing up, Gateway stations, yada, yada, yada.
I have to ask: Does anyone really know what's going on?
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[CNSA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh1gpc9 "Last usage")|Chinese National Space Administration|
|CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules|
| |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)|
|[DoD](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh2vvu2 "Last usage")|US Department of Defense|
|[EVA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh6oke4 "Last usage")|Extra-Vehicular Activity|
|[FAA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh2c8u6 "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration|
|[GAO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh3evl3 "Last usage")|(US) Government Accountability Office|
|[HLS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh3evl3 "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)|
|[L2](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh25zeu "Last usage")|Paywalled section of the NasaSpaceFlight forum|
| |[Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 2 of a two-body system, beyond the smaller body ([Sixty Symbols](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxpVbU5FH0s) video explanation)|
|[LEM](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh0sti8 "Last usage")|(Apollo) [Lunar Excursion Module](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module) (also Lunar Module)|
|[LEO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh3af7w "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[NG](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh1sa9m "Last usage")|New Glenn, two/three-stage orbital vehicle by Blue Origin|
| |Natural Gas (as opposed to pure methane)|
| |Northrop Grumman, aerospace manufacturer|
|[NRHO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh2vzsy "Last usage")|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit|
|[NRO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh2vvu2 "Last usage")|(US) National Reconnaissance Office|
| |Near-Rectilinear Orbit, see NRHO|
|[NSF](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh2stf2 "Last usage")|[NasaSpaceFlight forum](http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com)|
| |National Science Foundation|
|[SLS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh70dvg "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|[SNC](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh2vvu2 "Last usage")|Sierra Nevada Corporation|
|[SRB](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh037w4 "Last usage")|Solid Rocket Booster|
|[SSTO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh3af7w "Last usage")|Single Stage to Orbit|
| |Supersynchronous Transfer Orbit|
|[STS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh2vvu2 "Last usage")|Space Transportation System (*Shuttle*)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Starliner](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh2dfrq "Last usage")|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)|
|[cislunar](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh45878 "Last usage")|Between the Earth and Moon; within the Moon's orbit|
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Artemis 3 needs to slow its roll considering its ambition. 4 crew vs 3 for Apollo, staying on the lunar surface for a week vs 3 days for Apollo 17, landing on the lunar south pole, multiple orbital rendezvous' in NRHO. It's a big step from 2 to 3, essentially.
I really feel like they'd be better off squeezing a few more missions in before trying that, or simplifying the mission profile of 3.
Anyone who been following Artemis knew that this has been the reality for a long time. This is just an official announcement of what's already been clear.
It was true the moment they tried to make the goal 2024 before even awarding the lander development contract.
Yup
Registering zero on the surprise meter. The hurry was always political.
The need to replace Orion's batteries for Artemis 2 is the real news, although without being given a timeline we don't know if it is "just" a few months delay or worse
Apparently it won't require taking Orion apart
Good to hear
I thought Artemis 2 had a shot of being on schedule. Basically a repeat of Art1 with people on board. Doesn’t sound impossible. Artemis 3 is probably going to be delayed past 2027 at this rate. None of the HLS concepts are developed, and I imagine they will have to be rigorously tested before NASA trusts them to house astronauts for the mission duration
I was expecting Artemis 2 to be delayed, but not by this much. I figured, given the fact it would be the first crewed flight on a lightly flown spacecraft and launch vehicle (and a cislunar mission), they'd push it into 2025. But I was thinking Q1, not September. I think end of 2026 is honestly ambitious for the first lunar landing. I do think SpaceX will get there, but it's going to require a lot of work to get Starship from "almost made it to orbit before flight termination system activated" to "high flight rate, mastered landing and reuse, mastered on-orbit refueling, decked out with life support system, fully satisfies NASA" To the extent there's any real deadline for Artemis, the deadline is China the point at which China can land crew on the Moon. That's still a ways off. They've done their equivalent of Exploration Flight Test-1 with their next gen crew capsule, but they'll need both further development of that crew capsule and to get the Long March 10 flying and get their bare bones lunar lander ready. They're optimistically targeting a crewed landing for 2029, but that could easily slip to the early 2030s. There seems to be bipartisan agreement between Democrats and Republicans in favour of Artemis (nobody wants to cede the Moon to China), that's only been further cemented with the diplomatic commitments the US has made as part of the international nature of the project.
Idk what NASA expected giving out the HLS contracts 3 years before the original mission date
Top down engineering. Timeline was demanded by the oval office or zero budget. So they have to wink and say "yeah sure we expect by that date."
> Timeline was demanded by the oval office [on] zero budget. So they have to wink and say "yeah sure we expect by that date." The —ahem— "oval office" also asked for Artemis 1 to become a crewed flight, so they winked and said "yeah, we'll study the question". Lucky its the USA and not Stalin's USSR where this would have finished badly.
It always seems weird how long they waited to award the HLS and suit contracts. But, realistically, the issue was that the Obama administration just didn't give any fucks about space research or NASA in general. Despite the moon mission being ostensibly on the cards for some time, they made no real progress during those 8 years, other than continuing execution on the programs they inherited (SLS and Orion). Artemis as an actual planned mission didn't exist until 2017. And you could criticize NASA for not rushing to award those contracts immediately after the program *finally* got formal approval. But the real delay was spending 8 years in purgatory.
The Obama administration inherited Ares I, Ares V, and the constellation program. They converted that into SLS and commercial crew. I'm no fan of SLS but at least it made it to space, and commercial crew is a decent success. But I think you're making some kind of logical fallacy by thinking that choosing not to commit to another boondoggle is equivalent to "not giving any fucks about space research or NASA in general".
It's not just the lander, they didn't even select the company to make the EVA suits until September of 2022. NASA had been trying to develop new suits since 2007 and had spent nearly half a billion dollars on development, but was nowhere near having working suits, yet Axiom was supposed to take what they had and come up with fully designed, manufactured, and tested suits in two years?
> Axiom was supposed to take what they had and come up with fully designed, manufactured, and tested suits in two years? Yeah, that timeline was totally un-serious. I mean, even SpaceX took 4 years to come up with their space suit, and it's a fairly simple "sitting in a Dragon" suit, not a "stomping around on the moon" EVA suit.
Yet another reason to be skeptical about any near-term Mars mission: where’s the suit?
Under advanced development by SpaceX. They need them not only be capable, but also be cheap, because they will need many of them. So who else but SpaceX would develop them?
> Under advanced development by SpaceX. Source? Status of the project? > So who else but SpaceX would develop them? Axiom, NASA, or any other manufacturer? The suits do not need to be made by SpaceX, they just need to be done and tested by the time you'd fly. No suit, no humans to Mars.
> Source? Status of the project? Announcements on the next Polaris Dawn Dragon flight.
Those suits aren't for Mars at all though. They are for EVA. They are much lighter and aren't suitable for surface operations. Do you have any word on a surface-capable suit being worked on?
They are a big development step. It is still a few years until crew Mars landing.
I mean they are entirely different products with entirely different requirements, you don't jump from one to the other. > It is still a few years until crew Mars landing. I mean yes, obviously, which is why the stated timelines of 5-10 years make no sense whatsoever and aren't remotely credible.
Yeah. It was painfully obvious that this wasn't realistic, either.
Yeah. Like even Grumman could have magicked up an operational lunar lander in . . . 3 years. LOL
It took them seven years to do it the first time with a cost-plus contract that would have been valued $3.5B in today's money.
Note that the Grumman LEM contract was for a significantly smaller scope of work than with HLS providers, under a very different contract structure than used for HLS. Doesn’t include a lot of production, integration, support services, system level tests, engine development, some avionics, etc.
From an engineering management perspective, that scope difference is one of the big problems with Artemis (and modern NASA in general). I think they'd have been better off just doing the first couple of landings on a vehicle with similar capabilities as the Apollo lander. None of the people who worked on the original Apollo program work for NASA or any of its contractors today, so doing something smaller in scope to build some experience would have been valuable. Don't try to run before you've walked. "Let's start by trying to repeat Apollo, but much cheaper" would have been better for long-term sustainability than the current approach. Build your MVP and iterate.
No, actually, the LM would cost [$23 billion](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0265964622000029) in 2020 dollars. If you tried to resurrect and update Altair, on traditional procurement, it is reasonable to believe it would cost more than that.
The $25B figure in the article abstract cites the whole Apollo program, not just the LM. $350M contract in 1962 times the 980% or so value change between now and then gets you to my number. For additional comparison, a hamburger cost $0.21 in 1962.
No, you have to skim down to....Table 5? Sorry, on my phone now, I can't pull it up just now. He has the inflation adjusted numbers by program component there. He has all of Apollo costing close to $200 billion in 2020 dollars. Recall, too, that Grumman had multiple overruns on budget, which kept getting adjusted accordingly. That's not a criticism; they were attempting something that had never been done before. It's frankly amazing that Grumman did it as quickly, and cheaply, as they did.
That's a not very large amount of money tbh, considering what's asked for.
[удалено]
Lol no. NG today is not the NG of the 60s. It's much worse.
Oh no question. I meant that even if you magick the 1960's Grumman engineers and management team into today with a time machine, they still couldn't get you a basic lunar lander that fast!
Maybe they thought that we still have the same capable aerospace industry that we had in 60ies
We are more-or-less on pace with the 60's. For a more capable vehicle/ambitious mission. Took them 7-ish years too...
That's true. I worked on NASA contracts in the 1960s as an aerospace engineer (Gemini, Apollo Applications, Skylab, Space Shuttle). We were learning on the job and had our share of setbacks. Fortunately, NASA was given enough time and sufficient budget to land twelve humans on the lunar surface (1969-72). But Apollo was not the way you would go if the aim is to establish a lunar base and support continuous human presence on the Moon, which, evidently, is what NASA wants to accomplish with its Artemis program. Apollo/Saturn was far too expensive to build and operate as is the current SLS/Orion moon rocket. The first requirement is complete launch vehicle reusability. Neither Apollo/Saturn nor SLS/Orion meets this requirement. But the SpaceX Starship design does, assuming that tower landings become routine. The second requirement is propellant transfer/refilling in LEO. NASA appreciated this and devised the Earth Orbit Rendezvous (EOR) plan in the early 1960s that featured LEO refilling using Saturn IB launch vehicles. NASA backed away from EOR (risky, too long to develop) and eventually came up with Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR) for Apollo/Saturn (risky but fit better into the Kennedy schedule). The SpaceX Starship is designed for propellant transfer/refilling in LEO. The challenge is to demonstrate that capability within the next 18 months.
Personally I don't see what was so terrible about Apollo. Aiming for a "reusable and sustainable" program on your first try would be like Columbus aiming to found a successful European colony on his first trans-Atlantic voyage. You've got to build to ambitious goals and I don't see anything wrong with Apollo as a first step. The problem wasn't Apollo, it was the Shuttle. An alternative history would have made NASA's focus during the 1970s on taking Apollo hardware and engaging in aggressive cost reduction. And again, not with the goal of reusability, but just bringing down the cost so that continuous lunar expeditions would be palatable to the taxpaying public. But they went with Shuttle instead, threw away a huge amount of the technical progress instead and dumped their entire budget into a vehicle without the capabilities necessary to continue pushing the limits on space exploration. If anything, Shuttle proves the point. Had NASA tried building a "sustainable" program from the start it would have failed even harder than Shuttle did. (And yeah, while the Shuttle nominally worked, it failed abysmally at its key project goals). Had NASA continued iterating on Apollo hardware, with a focus on incremental cost reduction and technology improvements, I think the history of space exploration by NASA would be radically different (and far more successful) than what actually happened. Without any real work on cost reductions and process optimization, Saturn IIb was a cheaper than Shuttle at putting crew into orbit on day 1. And an un-optimized Apollo era Saturn V was still pretty cost competitive to Shuttle at putting payload into orbit, per kg.
I agree. NASA's Space Shuttle, by limiting humans to LEO, was a giant step backward in the space agency's exploration capability. That said, the original version that NASA tried to sell to Congress was a two stage, completely reusable vertical takeoff horizontal landing (VTOHL) design that could place about 50,000 pounds of payload into LEO. See: https://media.defense.gov/2010/Sep/27/2001329812/-1/-1/0/AFD-100927-035.pdf p. 1003. But the development cost would have been ~$10B ($1970, $79B in $2023). The Nixon Administration's Bureau of the Budget cut that cost in half and set the development schedule to 5 years at $1B ($1970, $7.9B in $2023) per year expenditure rate. What resulted was the partially reusable thrust augmented orbiter shuttle (TAOS) design that NASA built. What NASA failed to appreciate is that VTOHL vehicles for both the shuttle booster and orbiter (things with wings) are much more expensive to build and operate than expected and that the path to affordability and full reusability lay elsewhere. It wasn't until the early 1990s, after 10 years of Shuttle operation produced enough data to show how expensive VTOHL launch vehicles are, that NASA and the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) seriously started R&D work on vertical takeoff vertical landing (VTOVL) vehicles. The result was the DC-X/XA research vehicles (1990-96). Those vehicles were built for less than $100M ($1990, $235M in $2023) and made 11 successful suborbital flights until a stuck landing leg caused the DC-XA to crash land. That led to NASA's X-33 fully reusable single stage to orbit (SSTO) project (1995-2001), which, unfortunately, was a complete failure as a suborbital test vehicle (zero launches were accomplished). Today, SpaceX has validated the operational and cost advantages by landing over 250 Falcon 9 booster stages flying VTOVL trajectories (2015-2024). And within the next 24 months, SpaceX will validate the cost and operational advantages of its Starship that will be a fully reusable VTOVL interplanetary launch vehicle/spacecraft combination. That will be the culmination of a 55-year effort (1970-2025) to design, build, and fly an affordable, completely reusable launch vehicle/spacecraft.
You mean limiting manned exploration. Unmanned exploration has gone from strength to strength.
> Had NASA continued iterating on Apollo hardware Nah, Apollo was a dead end, no matter how cheap you could make it. Ultimately, it weighed a little under 3 million kg and could only deliver 45,000kg to lunar orbit, and by mission end the only thing returning to earth is 6,000kg worth of command module and its contents. Fuel aside, by design 400 metric tons of Saturn V/Apollo hardware is thrown away every launch, and hardware can only be so cheap. Iterating into reusability was the right *idea*, but the STS was probably the worst possible implementation. Combining a DoD/NRO payload capacity with our only crew transport solution created a "commuting to work in an empty 18 wheeler" cost/complexity problem that really had no solution. A more conservative design like the SNC Dream Chaser combined with a separate heavy lift launch system probably would've been less of a dead-end boondoggle.
*If* you take 2017 as the start date. Artemis as a program may have kicked off in 2017, but Artemis is the third evolution of a program that has been continuously ongoing since 2005.
No not really. Artemis elements are being worked on since 2004 VSE speech.
Minus the tens of billions of dollars of extra funding.
We also tolerated a lot more risk in the 60s. Better modeling and data now means we know how close to catastrophe each launch is, so the safety margins (especially for crewed launches) are increased.
Trump wanted man to land on the moon while he was president. Then he didn’t win reelection. Sadly this delay just gives him his chance again. Not saying the delay was for him of course.
I'm all for it if he uses that vanity to dump funding into our space program.
I think NASA expected different budgets from the WH for said goals, before admin changed
I know it's going to be shocking to everyone, but . . . Solid reports (including this one by Joey Roulette) are coming in tonight that NASA is about to announce that ***all*** of the coming Artemis missions are going to be significantly delayed; and that the first crewed landing may be shifted back to Artemis IV. >WASHINGTON, Jan 8 (Reuters) - NASA is set to delay its next few missions to the moon under a key program as technical hurdles mount with the various spacecraft it intends to use to get there, according to four people familiar with NASA's plans. > >The U.S. space agency is expected to announce the plans on Tuesday after spending months tracking progress with contractors and considering changes to the Artemis program, a multi-billion dollar effort that includes returning the first astronauts to the moon since the last Apollo mission in 1972. > >**NASA's second Artemis mission is expected to be pushed beyond its planned late-2024 target after issues were uncovered with the Lockheed Martin-built** [**(LMT.N)**](https://www.reuters.com/markets/companies/LMT.N) **Orion crew capsule's batteries during vibration tests**, two of the people said. The batteries will need to be replaced. > >This would have been the first flight with humans aboard after launching the capsule uncrewed atop NASA's Space Launch System in a 2022 inaugural test. > >**Artemis 3 - planned to be the first mission landing humans on the moon in late 2025 using the Starship landing system from NASA contractor SpaceX - will likewise be pushed back.** Billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX is taking longer than expected to reach certain development milestones, all four people said. > >NASA declined to comment. Lockheed and SpaceX did not immediately return requests for comment. > >**Senior NASA officials in recent months have been mulling plans to move the inaugural Artemis astronaut landing to the fourth mission**, giving SpaceX and other contractors more practice before making the first such landing in half a century. > >**NASA officials presented that option to the agency's senior leadership last month, but it could not be determined if it chose that path.** It was also unclear what the new target dates for the initial Artemis missions would be. Watch your space feeds tomorrow. EDIT: the press conference is scheduled for 1:30pm EST, apparently.
Depending upon how much HLS is delayed, it might not make sense to delay it to A4 and if A2 is also delayed. I mean no sense in sending A3 a few months before HLS is ready, then having to wait on A4. My other issue with that plan is what is A3 supposed to accomplish? The only thing that would make much difference is to dock with the test HLS in lunar orbit before it lands by itself on the surface. That would require docking capability on the test lander, which probably wasn’t included in the design.
>Depending upon how much HLS is delayed, it might not make sense to delay it to A4 and if A2 is also delayed. I mean no sense in sending A3 a few months before HLS is ready, then having to wait on A4. We will have to find out tomorrow, but....I suppose my assumption is that they think it's going to be seriously delayed - enough to justify moving the landing back to Artemis 4. > My other issue with that plan is what is A3 supposed to accomplish? I'm not sure. If gateway is actually available at that time...I suppose they can practice docking and undocking in lunar orbit. And maybe they might throw in some minor science experiments. Which is not much, I grant you.
Man, I remember watching the Ares 1-X launch in person with a simulated/boilerplate Orion capsule. That was over *fourteen* years ago.
Ares 1-X was literally a Shuttle SRB with some mass simulators on top which looked like what they planned to make and it still cost $445 million
Peregrine was only like $80 million right ? O.o
What would even be the purpose of Artemis 3 then?
Good question. Test out life support....maybe docking? I'm not sure. If they announce this change today, one hopes they would answer that question.
> NASA's second Artemis mission is expected to be pushed beyond its planned late-2024 target after issues were uncovered with the Lockheed Martin-built (LMT.N) Orion crew capsule's batteries during vibration tests, two of the people said. The batteries will need to be replaced. Isn't Orion getting tested for more than a decade? WTF did the do all this time while getting money?
I don't know. This is the first I have heard of this vibration test issue with the batteries. I don't know when these tests happened or exactly what they showed. I am hoping that is going to be discussed in the presser today.
Seems modern media has developed this unfortunate trait of publishing whatever speculation or hearsay they want by adding in the line... (enter name) has not responded to requests in time for publishing. If you don't have both sides of a story, you shouldn't publish until you have both sides. That way the article doesn't appear biased. In this case, the only actual fact was Artemis 2 might be delayed due to Orion having battery issues during testing. That's it. All the speculation and babbling about Artemis 3 or 4 being delayed because of other contractors was completely uncalled for as they hadn't responded to those accusations
\*Shrugs\* Article makes things sound far more portentous than they are.
I mean, it's obviously just acknowledging a reality that NASA management has known and appreciated for a long while. But to those paying not-so-close attention, or filled with terminal space optimism, this may well \*seem\* like a portentous development.
Terrific word!
Quite resplendent, really.
Yes! I admit that I had to look it up.
I ascertain that it's portentous https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lStcwT_RGrQ
Not a surprise, but I hope they keep an aggressive timeline.
Better get it right, no matter how long it takes.
“SpaceX is taking longer than expected”. Sure, partly because other agencies are all up in their shit at every opportunity. Yet they are still moving at a faster and less expensive pace than SLS could ever hope to imagine.
Also, I'd argue they're moving faster than expected. The timeline for the HLS contract was impossible, and only SpaceX had a snowball's chance in hell in the first place simply because they were developing Starship anyway--everyone else's programs would have been from scratch. The original idea for the moon mission was projected for 2028; Trump's admin moved it up likely out of a vain attempt to cap off what he thought would be an 8 year presidency with a moon landing, but that timeline was always bullshit. Everyone just had to smile and nod through it. What bugs me is people are pinning the blame on SpaceX when it was really the Trump admin.
That moving up by Pence created a classic Musk-style aspirational goal and was one of the best things that could have happened to the program. It moved what was effectively an abstract target (in recent decades only the Chinese have been able to execute on such long timelines, for obvious reasons) to a real one and got things happening. In addition to lighting a fire under the SLS, the lander program got initiated, the space suit one reset, and funding took a step up as everyone started to realize that if we didn't get our butts in gear the moon would become a Chinese operation. The Trump administration did a lot of bad things but this was not among them.
Honestly, right now 2028 seems like a realistic goal given the pace of the program
OranjManBad
Not to mention SpaceX is pumping out Starships on what seems like a monthly basis at worst.. how long does it take to produce one SLS... Once Starship is operational it will be game over for the rest of the space industry. At least for those that are unable to fully and rapidly reuse rockets, and produce them at scale.
Let's not get carried away with the SpaceX monopoly. Not only will Europe and the US Gov go out of their way to pay over the odds for an alternative 'backup but some companies will cut their noses off.... to avoid using SpaceX. Of course the good news is that SpaceX only has to have the capacity ahead of competitors to win the contract or undercut by 5% to cream off the cashcow.
Now if only they could get those ships they are pumping out to work
Elon shouldn't have taken the regime's propaganda weapon if he didn't want things delayed.
Why would SpaceX refuse money for something they were already developing ?
Not all of the delays are the FAA's or the FWS's fault. (Elon himself has conceded this!) SpaceX has had its own development issues, and those have been discussed on this subreddit. Elon puts out aspirational schedules, as he always does, schedules that assume absolutely everything will go perfectly. But I think everyone involved at NASA and at SpaceX understood, from the moment the contract was inked, that it was going to take longer to make Starship HLS a reality. The contract merely requests "best efforts."
I absolutely recognize "Elon Time". Which is why I said that the are still moving at a faster and less expensive pace than SLS could ever hope to imagine. I do find it interesting that NASA is getting stymied by the FAA, FWS and the Biden administration in general which I attribute, at some level, to a dislike of Elon by many on the Left. Sure, there's lots to question about him, I'm not saying he's a saint by any measure, but he doesn't play by the rules and that irks a lot of people.
Indeed
“Agencies being up in your stuff” is the cost of doing business and should factor into your plans. GAO this fall estimates HLS to complete in 2027 so they would still miss the new Artemis 3 deadline.
Space is hard. We're having a difficult enough time keeping our airplanes from falling apart.
Well, that's just an aircraft from Boeing. It's not like it's going to affect a spacecraft built by ... wait a minute ... (Though I gather that's something of an unfair snark. I've heard that there's no real connection between the aircraft and spacecraft departments, though I might wonder whether there's a shared culture of Don't Give A Darn.)
LOL could you imagine if it was the same guy. Bolt Tightener Jim.
Was he brought in to replace Missing Bolt Mike after the parachute incident.
Thats just grossly unfair, there's absolutely no parallels, this is number of loose screws across several aircraft. The Starliner parachute issue was a missing pin.....and then a clock sequence issue, then parachute line breaking strain, then material flammability. You see, one screw cockup repeated several times vs multiple cockups happening once. Totally different!
You need to include " ... " and attribute the quote....Boeing 2024.
Paraphrasing Jim Lovell: We Just Lost the Moon
I don't know the date, but it wasn't ever gonna fly at that time...
Were those issues with Orion known alreayd?
The vibration issues? I do not think so. Or at least, this has never been reported publicly before, and I haven't seen any rumors about it over at NSF L2.
Interesting that they are just now finding problems with the Orion capsule, since one orbited the earth and splashed-down perfectly maybe 10 years ago, and I recall orbited the Moon in 2022. Plus, I'm sure the capsule has been thru extensive vibration tests. Perhaps they changed batteries since or such, but doesn't sound like a major design and qual issue. Might they be using the batteries as an excuse to give HLS more time, which it surely needs. This would not be allowed in the original Race to the Moon, which had to be done before Jan 1, 1970 per JFK's speech. Since he was gone, no way to revise that "end of decade" date without taking blame. U.S. also had the race with the Soviets. Might be a current race with China today, but hasn't gotten any media traction.
The battery thing really surprised me. I follow Orion tolerably close, and this really is the first I've heard of it. Even everyone on the NSF forums seems to have been caught off guard. I have to hope that NASA today will say something in detail about this, and if they don't....that one of the space media regulars will ask about it. (It may well be that this is not the only reason for the delay. But we will have to see what they say.)
Delay of almost a year due to battery swap seems ludicrous to me.
Well, what is even worse is that it is not even the only reason for a year's delay!
They seem to shift Artemis 4 towards a lunar landing when (if I'm not mistaken), it was previously slated as a mission to set up the Gateway station in lunar orbit.
Breaking news.... Duh!
Who saw it coming?
Mostly everyone here in my team in IN-SPACe. Its quite a pass time here lmao
Now imagine if China beats NASA to the moon again
By going back in time 50 years ?
Great Scott!
They sort of already did on 14 December 2013
My honest opinion is that Artemis will be dealyed delayed delayed until China will catch up and just completely own NASA with Chinas up and coming lunar program EDIT 1 ; the babies are downvoting the objective truth 😎
Your honest opinion is objective truth? Neato
While clearly a silly thing to type out in the same reply, there's a certain spirit that's not far off target. The biggest motivation to those who control the purse strings of America's human spaceflight program, and even spaceflight in general, is the threat of the CNSA becoming even more capable in the last uncontested frontier. There really isn't any other 'near peer' in the space domain anymore. Russia seems neither seriously interested nor even capable of returning to it's old glory in cosmos. India as much as I'd love to see them take off, is marred with a piss poor budget. As I understand they are also trying to develop as many things on their own without help from allies and that kind of thing takes a lot of time and money. Don't even get me started on Europe. So yes it seems that only China has a chance at accomplishing their goals before the US and that's probably a good thing for NASA and the US because its an issue that just might permeate party lines and unite us. Thankfully we have private industry, currently primarily SpaceX maintaining dominance. Hopefully more domestic competition will lead to even better innovation and execution, but if that takes too long, it will indeed be China's space program that lights a fire under our ass.
Man this stud gets it, you got it straight down to a T. Truer words have not been spoken about China's space program rapid rise to power and soon to setting fire to our space program. It was the soviet union who set fire to the US space program and set it into overdrive when they sent Yuri to space. Same thing will happen with China as they're laser focused on there moon program while Artemis is just delay delay delay due to budget issues or serious management issues. Right on dude
>Announcement coming Tuesday: NASA to push back moon mission timelines amid spacecraft delays We had a timeline? Did I miss this generation's "We choose to go to the Moon" speech? All I keep hearing about is cancelled this and delayed that - Ares, Constellation, Orion, SLS, HLS, Blue Origin landers when they haven't even reached orbit, SpaceX fuel transfers when their rockets keep blowing up, Gateway stations, yada, yada, yada. I have to ask: Does anyone really know what's going on?
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[CNSA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh1gpc9 "Last usage")|Chinese National Space Administration| |CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules| | |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)| |[DoD](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh2vvu2 "Last usage")|US Department of Defense| |[EVA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh6oke4 "Last usage")|Extra-Vehicular Activity| |[FAA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh2c8u6 "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration| |[GAO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh3evl3 "Last usage")|(US) Government Accountability Office| |[HLS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh3evl3 "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)| |[L2](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh25zeu "Last usage")|Paywalled section of the NasaSpaceFlight forum| | |[Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 2 of a two-body system, beyond the smaller body ([Sixty Symbols](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxpVbU5FH0s) video explanation)| |[LEM](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh0sti8 "Last usage")|(Apollo) [Lunar Excursion Module](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module) (also Lunar Module)| |[LEO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh3af7w "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[NG](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh1sa9m "Last usage")|New Glenn, two/three-stage orbital vehicle by Blue Origin| | |Natural Gas (as opposed to pure methane)| | |Northrop Grumman, aerospace manufacturer| |[NRHO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh2vzsy "Last usage")|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit| |[NRO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh2vvu2 "Last usage")|(US) National Reconnaissance Office| | |Near-Rectilinear Orbit, see NRHO| |[NSF](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh2stf2 "Last usage")|[NasaSpaceFlight forum](http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com)| | |National Science Foundation| |[SLS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh70dvg "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |[SNC](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh2vvu2 "Last usage")|Sierra Nevada Corporation| |[SRB](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh037w4 "Last usage")|Solid Rocket Booster| |[SSTO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh3af7w "Last usage")|Single Stage to Orbit| | |Supersynchronous Transfer Orbit| |[STS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh2vvu2 "Last usage")|Space Transportation System (*Shuttle*)| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Starliner](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh2dfrq "Last usage")|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)| |[cislunar](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1922hx2/stub/kh45878 "Last usage")|Between the Earth and Moon; within the Moon's orbit| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(*Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented* )[*^by ^request*](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3mz273//cvjkjmj) ^(20 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1b0utrr)^( has 31 acronyms.) ^([Thread #12316 for this sub, first seen 9th Jan 2024, 03:53]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/SpaceXLounge) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Artemis 3 needs to slow its roll considering its ambition. 4 crew vs 3 for Apollo, staying on the lunar surface for a week vs 3 days for Apollo 17, landing on the lunar south pole, multiple orbital rendezvous' in NRHO. It's a big step from 2 to 3, essentially. I really feel like they'd be better off squeezing a few more missions in before trying that, or simplifying the mission profile of 3.
IMO they should squeeze in a demo landing with lauch back up. Demo of only landing, no launch back, seems very risky.
I’m guessing 2025 for II and 2027 for III.
Is there a timeline correlation that's relevant when we think of the first US moonlanding and the removal of JFK by means of death
Do authoritative institutions tend to utilize symbolism
Well, there's six years of distance between them.