US space policy

[raydude]

Uh-oh...NASA has begun a study of SLS' affordability. If you strip away political considerations, it's hard to see this as good news for Artemis.

Perhaps most significantly, SpaceX is continuing a flight test campaign of its Starship Launch System, which may make its first orbital flight in the next 12 months. This is a launch vehicle that could potentially out-lift the SLS rocket, be reusable, and cost a fraction of the price. If SpaceX succeeds in getting Starship into orbit, there would be little technical justification for continuing government subsidization of the less capable SLS booster, which is expendable and costs much, much more.

Proponents of the SLS rocket are not blind to this. Some believe SpaceX will not succeed with its Starship program, and indeed myriad technical challenges remain. Others think NASA could find ways of making the SLS rocket more competitive, and that is one point of this study.

Another reason for the new analysis, however, is to assess whether NASA really needs the SLS rocket at all as part of the Artemis Program. Already, companies are planning to deliver the lunar lander to the Moon with private rockets. The main job left for the SLS rocket is launching Orion, with crew, to the Moon. Launching Orion may also be doable with private rockets, or the crew could simply launch on SpaceX's Starship, obviating the need for Orion itself.
...
One source said Biden White House may seek to fly SLS only a handful of times, halt work on the Exploration Upper Stage, and plan the future of Artemis around commercial launch vehicles.

Biden won't change NASA's mandate for a sustained return to the moon, and it will still be called Artemis...but whether it features SLS or even Orion is up for discussion again. (If Starship becomes operational in the next few years, what's the role for Orion?)

I haven't been following Starship all that closely but from what I've seen doesn't it just refer to the rocket? Is there a "Starship capsule" and if so what is it called? If not, then the article itself says Orion could launch as the capsule aboard Starship. The other side of it too is that, whatever the Starship capsule is, it will probably be built to be as general as possible, which means it has to be able to ferry astronauts to/from ISS as well as do other general tasks. On the other hand, Orion could be repurposed to do only a few things. One of them being to ferry astronauts from Earth orbit to lunar orbit and back again.

[Isgrimnur]

[raydude]

Okay, that's what I thought. Everything I've read about Starship so far only talks about the payload compartment as carrying non-human objects. That's the opposite of what Orion is supposed to do.

[Kraken]

When fully operational, Starship will carry up to 100 passengers. With the Super Heavy booster, it can reach the moon, land, and take off again under its own power (thanks, 1/6 g.). When fully refueled in orbit, it can go to Mars and back. At least, that's the plan.

Musk's goal is for Starship to reach orbit by the end of this year and for Super Heavy to come online soon after. He intends to fly passengers around the moon by 2023 (I think that's still the target). The first trip is reserved for a Japanese billionaire and eight companions of his choice.

[raydude]

When fully operational, Starship will carry up to 100 passengers. With the Super Heavy booster, it can reach the moon, land, and take off again under its own power (thanks, 1/6 g.). When fully refueled in orbit, it can go to Mars and back. At least, that's the plan.

Musk's goal is for Starship to reach orbit by the end of this year and for Super Heavy to come online soon after. He intends to fly passengers around the moon by 2023 (I think that's still the target). The first trip is reserved for a Japanese billionaire and eight companions of his choice.

I could be wrong but I don't think having an existing capsule (i.e. Dragon) allows you to take shortcuts for other human containers. Whatever the human carrying part of Starship is called (I'm just going to call it HumShip for now) it still needs to go through the same tests that Dragon did. Have you seen anything about testing HumShip or HumShip components?

[Kraken]

Nope, nothing beyond those statements of intent.

[Kurth]

This was an interesting read in the NYT this morning: The Space Launch System: NASA's Last Rocket

The United States is unlikely to build anything like the Space Launch System ever again. But it’s still good that NASA did.

Eleven years in the making, the most powerful NASA-built rocket since the Apollo program at last stands upright. Framed by the industrial test platform to which it is mounted, the Space Launch System’s core section is a gleaming, apricot-colored column cast into relief by twisting pipes and steel latticework. The rocket is taller than the Statue of Liberty, pedestal and all, and is the cornerstone of NASA’s astronaut ambitions. The launch vehicle is central to the agency’s Artemis program to return humans to the lunar surface, and later, land them on Mars.

On Thursday, NASA will try for a second time to prove that the Space Launch System is ready to take flight, aiming for a continuous “hot fire” of its engines for as long as eight minutes. If the test goes well, the rocket’s next stop would be Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and as early as November, the launchpad. It is expected to lift a capsule called Orion on a path around the moon and back. Its first crewed mission is planned for 2023. That flight will be the first to lift astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit since 1972. Indeed, it will send astronauts farther into space than any human has gone before.

And yet far from being a bold statement about the future of human spaceflight, the Space Launch System rocket represents something else: the past, and the end. This is the last class of rocket that NASA is ever likely to build.

Seeing it launch, though, will actually mean something. While NASA has long desired to return astronauts to deep space, it could not. The agency lacked a vehicle designed, tested and validated as safe to lift humans more than a couple of hundred miles from the ground. If this week’s test succeeds and the rocket later flies, the United States will be able to say that it does.

[raydude]

I was actually surprised NASA is so currently so well-funded (16.25 billion in 2007).

As a comparison, NASA's budget is roughly 8 times what the FDA's budget is. They only have responsibility to ensure the food we eat is safe, and the drugs/devices used in the US to treat us are safe and effective.

It's over twice the EPA budget of 7 billion. NASA receives 3x the funding that the National Cancer Institute does (though a little more than half of what the NIH overall -which includes research grants- receives).

The DOJ, which includes the FBI, federal prisons, DEA, BATFE (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives), has a 24 billion budget.

Comparatively, 16 bill for NASA is a pretty decent budget.

All that NASA pork must be on the human spaceflight side. An APL colleague of mine told me how her friends in Arlington who work on military space projects cannot believe we fly planetary missions on a fraction of what military programs cost.

[jztemple2]

Remember that NASA is also involved in aeronautics research plus a lot of environmental stuff.

[Zaxxon]

Nelson is confirmed as the next NASA administrator:

[Pyperkub]

Another good read on the Falcon 9 and Starship.

The company has already flown one of its Falcon 9 first stages nine times and will soon fly it a tenth time. The plan is to push the limits of the Falcon 9 with the company's own Starlink missions, Musk said.

"There doesn’t seem to be any obvious limits to the reusability of the vehicle," he said. "We intend to fly the Falcon 9 rocket until we see some kind of failure."

These lessons will be incorporated into SpaceX's next-generation Starship and Super Heavy launch system, which is designed to be fully reusable and able to launch again within days of landing. That's the aspirational goal, at least. NASA seems intrigued, as it recently selected Starship to land its astronauts on the Moon later this decade as part of the Artemis Program.

A bit more info on the Falcon 9's range (the reason we can't get to the moon currently is primarily because the Space Shuttle was engineered by committee and couldn't go beyond Low Earth Orbit).

Falcon 9 can lift payloads of up to 22,800 kilograms (50,300 lb) to low Earth orbit (LEO), 8,300 kg (18,300 lb) to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) when expended, and 5,500 kg (12,100 lb) to GTO when the first stage is recovered.[1][17][18] The heaviest GTO payloads flown have been Intelsat 35e with 6,761 kg (14,905 lb), and Telstar 19V with 7,075 kg (15,598 lb). The latter was launched into a lower-energy GTO achieving an apogee well below the geostationary altitude,[19] while the former was launched into an advantageous super-synchronous transfer orbit.[20]

Note that the GTO for the Intelsat is still only 26k miles, a far cry from the 250k miles to the moon. Low Earth Orbit is 99-1,200 mi, so it's better, but we still can't get far (yet).

[jztemple2]

A bit more info on the Falcon 9's range (the reason we can't get to the moon currently is primarily because the Space Shuttle was engineered by committee and couldn't go beyond Low Earth Orbit).

All rockets are designed by committee, as is pretty much everything more complicated than a toaster. And there never was any intent for the Space Shuttle to go beyond LEO.

[raydude]

Remember that NASA is also involved in aeronautics research plus a lot of environmental stuff.

This is true. NASA grants provide some of the fuel that powers university engineering and science programs and funds research for scientists and engineers who aren't actively participating in a mission.

[Kraken]

NASA admin Bill Nelson has a chat with The Verge. He says things you'd expect, but there's ample room between the lines. Sample:

It looks like your first big test is this Human Landing System dilemma we’re seeing unfold, with bid protests and Sen. Maria Cantwell’s amendment aiming to reopen the competition that SpaceX won. Have you put your Senate experience to use and talked to your Senate buddies about this?

So. I’ve been having a lot of conversations with senators, congressmen, and particularly their staff, and White House staff as well. This is about the budget, and I’ve been making the case that we need vigorous competition going forward on the Human Landing System. And of course, everything’s frozen up until the first of August, with the protest of the SpaceX award. Depending on how that goes, either way, we’re going to need the competition. Maria Cantwell, at my confirmation hearing, was talking about that. And of course, I assured her that competition is good, and you get greater efficiencies and greater performance out of competition.

But Congress has got to do its part. And that is to prepare, plan for, and provide the money so we can have a vigorous competition and have more than one awardee. In last year’s budget, NASA had requested $3.4 billion for this competition, and Congress came up with $850 million. You just can’t do the competition with that kind of funding.

Do we really need vigorous competition with SpaceX for the lunar lander, or is this just how you get Congress to open the spigot?

[Zaxxon]

Narrator: it's how you get Congress to open the spigot.

[Kraken]

NASA deputy admin nominee and former astronaut Pam Melroy riffs on Chinese rivalry.

It's not just the landing on Mars, which is very impressive, but also a couple of landings on the moon, and of course the new construction starting of a low Earth orbit space station," Melroy told lawmakers of China.

That Mars landing, of the 530-lb. (240 kilograms) Zhurong rover, occurred on May 14. It put China in select company; previously, only the United States had managed to land and operate a spacecraft on the Martian surface for an appreciable length of time.

Melroy added that she remains in support of the current law forbidding NASA from most activities with China without express support from Congress, colloquially referred to as the Wolf Amendment.

"China has made their goals very clear — to take away space superiority from the United States," she said. "So, we are right to be concerned, when you add the other concerns of intellectual property theft and aggressive behavior in space.

"NASA will continue to follow the law," she continued. "It's there to ensure that the U.S. thinks very carefully about any kind of engagement with China. However, we have to operate together in the space domain. So there are times when it's in the best interest of the United States to talk to China."

[jztemple2]

Space superiority? Sounds like another way to say "Give us lots of money and we'll spend it even faster than China!". We don't NEED to go to the moon or Mars. As far as other superiority categories, those sound like they would be best left up to the Space Force (hate that name).

[Kraken]

As we verge on the first launch of Artemis, here's former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver's take on the politics that got us here and what's next. Sample:

Ars: The House and the Senate have remained steadfast in their support of SLS since then. What do you think it will take for Congress to reevaluate this posture?

Garver: I think there are two scenarios, or a mix of them. A big one is SpaceX's Starship operating regularly at lower costs. I mean, NASA is obviously helping that happen. But their line has been, "Oh, but it won't be human-rated for launch." OK, well, if it's flying lots of humans, at what point does that become really an embarrassing statement? And it's all about flight rate. It will become inevitably embarrassing if Starship is launching dozens of times a year like Falcon 9 is, and SLS once every two years. The second scenario is SLS not going well. I think a test flight is just that, it's a test flight. This happy talk of it being completed—just look at the language, the celebration, NASA's planning, and so forth for the launch. There is not another test flight planned if this doesn't go perfectly. So then what? You're going to put people on one in two years if the first one didn't go well? I just have never heard anyone talk about that plan. It could be a combination of those things, not a perfect test flight and Starship flying, I think is what is the scenario that would lead to the demise of SLS.

[jztemple2]

Garver makes a good couple of points there. Congress remains supportive of SLS and Artemis because it is one of the few big ticket items that doesn't have many big name detractors. The people (generally) love space exploration, astronauts and gee whiz tech. And SLS/Artemis is farmed out to a lot of states that have a lot of voters.

I think her first scenario might become valid after Artemis has landed a crew on the moon. If by then Starship is flying reliably with people on board there might be a push to curtail Artemis, SLS and Orion. This would be true especially if Starship fulfills its contract as NASA's Human Landing System (HLS) part of the moon landing. However, flying big rockets to orbit is one thing, providing a safe Starship vehicle for humans is a much bigger thing. NASA is following a very conservative approach where the failure of any Artemis mission is something to be carefully avoided. SpaceX's approach to me has been very much trial and error, if one rocket fails they just build and fly another one. If one with a crew fails, the fallout will be a lot more critical.

I'm not so sure about her second point. If Artemis I doesn't go well, I think NASA could come up with a fallback plan to fly another test flight. Depending on what failed, that next test flight might have humans or not (by the way, as I'm typing this I can hear the Falcon 9 SpaceX has just launched with another Starlink cluster). Remember that Shuttle suffered two catastrophic losses with seven crew apiece and there was never any serious discussion to cancel the program. NASA has a brilliant public relations approach, you can see that with their Lego figurines, the mascots, STEM programs, etc. There's a lot of national pride there, I don't think a failed flight will matter much. And as far as money is concerned, NASA's FY 2022 is about 24 billion, which may sound like a lot, but the latest proposal for student debt forgiveness is for spending a billion dollars more than that each year for ten years. A few more billion for another test flight won't sound too outrageous.

By the way, in the lead photo of the article, the guy sitting next to Garver is Charlie Bolden, who was NASA Administrator under Obama. One night while we were sitting at the propulsion console in the management firing room waiting for an early morning Shuttle launch Charlie came in and sat down with us; some of my NASA guys knew Charlie when he was an astronaut and so it was very informal. One of my NASA guys (who was a bit of a smart ass) asked Charlie straight up why he took such a thankless job as Administrator. Charlie thought for a moment and then said "When the president calls and asks you, you don't say no". I'm sure there were a number of times during his tenure that he wished he had said no

[Kraken]

NASA is following a very conservative approach where the failure of any Artemis mission is something to be carefully avoided. SpaceX's approach to me has been very much trial and error, if one rocket fails they just build and fly another one. If one with a crew fails, the fallout will be a lot more critical.

Yeah, "fail fast" is not the NASA way.

I'm not so sure about her second point. If Artemis I doesn't go well, I think NASA could come up with a fallback plan to fly another test flight.

Sure they could, but depending on the level of not going well, rebooting Artemis 1 would push Artemis 3 into 2030 or beyond and they'd have to renumber, which is annoying.

By the way, in the lead photo of the article, the guy sitting next to Garver is Charlie Bolden, who was NASA Administrator under Obama. One night while we were sitting at the propulsion console in the management firing room waiting for an early morning Shuttle launch Charlie came in and sat down with us; some of my NASA guys knew Charlie when he was an astronaut and so it was very informal. One of my NASA guys (who was a bit of a smart ass) asked Charlie straight up why he took such a thankless job as Administrator. Charlie thought for a moment and then said "When the president calls and asks you, you don't say no". I'm sure there were a number of times during his tenure that he wished he had said no

OK, you're in the pocket of Big Booster. Got it.

[$iljanus]

Ideally if we could coordinate our efforts across the planet space exploration would look much different. But because we don’t get along humans can’t have nice things.

[jztemple2]

OK, you're in the pocket of Big Booster. Got it.

Actually I think the whole SLS program is absurd. All those ex-Shuttle parts that were designed to be reusable but SLS will be throwing them away. NASA didn't necessarily need to use the SpaceX design but there were a lot of other designs that were proposed. But just because I don't agree with the concept doesn't mean I can't enjoy the results

[malchior]

Pitchbot is on top of things!

[Octavious]

Damn it Joe!

[Kraken]

WaPo has a good summary of where politics stand on the new moon race, and why the Artemis Accords are a BFD.

During the Trump administration, China’s space ambitions were a rallying cry to galvanize NASA — and Congress — to move with greater urgency. In calling for NASA to significantly accelerate its return to the moon, Vice President Mike Pence said in a 2019 speech that the United States was in a race with China, casting it as a reprise of the space race against the Soviet Union to the moon. He said that China’s goal was “to seize the lunar strategic high ground and become the world’s preeminent spacefaring nation.”

After President Donald Trump was defeated by Joe Biden, there was widespread concern in the space community that the new administration would kill the Artemis program. Instead, the Biden White House embraced it, making it the first lunar human exploration campaign to survive successive administrations since the Apollo era.

It has also echoed the Trump administration’s hawkish rhetoric about China. Bill Nelson, who was made the NASA administrator by President Biden, has called China “a very aggressive competitor” and recently issued a warning: “Watch the Chinese.” NASA is effectively barred from partnering with China in space by a 2011 law that was passed because of fears that it would steal U.S. technology.

In an interview, Pam Melroy, the deputy NASA administrator and a former astronaut, said she was concerned about how China and others might act on the moon, particularly when extracting resources, such as water ice. “Does it make me nervous?” she said. “Yes, especially with China.”

That, she said, is “one of the reasons why the Artemis Accords are so very important. Just having a partnership so that we are transparent and clear and everybody has an understanding of what we are trying to achieve.”
...
The accords also offer another potential benefit: to make it more difficult for future presidential administrations to kill the Artemis program, a trend that has plagued NASA’s deep space exploration efforts for decades. That was the thought of the architects of the accords, and it proved true after the Biden administration picked up where Trump’s left off, keeping the program and continuing to recruit other nations to join. Now more than 20 have signed, including Bahrain, Brazil, Colombia, Israel and Singapore, creating a broad coalition embraced by Republicans and Democrats.

“Sustainability was a key reason that the Artemis Accords are so important,” Gold said. “If you look at NASA’s past efforts, failure at creating a beyond-low-Earth orbit human exploration mission wasn’t just an option, it was a certainty. That’s in stark contrast to the International Space Station, which has been the crown jewel of global human spaceflight for decades. There were two reasons for that. First, because it was international, it enjoyed global support and cooperation. Second was bipartisanship within Congress.”

[Unagi]

bipartisanship within Congress

It's been a fun ride.

[Kraken]

It feels like time to revive this thread as the moon race proceeds. China is deploying lunar exploration infrastructure

The next phase of China's Moon program began with the launch of a new data relay satellite Monday to link lunar landers and rovers on the far side of the Moon with ground controllers back on Earth.

...

Scheduled for launch on a heavy-lift Long March 5 rocket in May, Chang'e 6 will be the first Chinese lunar lander to rely on the new data relay satellite. Chang'e 6 will target a landing on the Moon, collect samples, and return them to Earth, repeating the feat China accomplished with the Chang'e 5 sample return mission in 2020.

...

While Queqiao-2 is only China's second lunar data relay satellite, the country has a head start in building its lunar infrastructure for the 2020s and 2030s. However, NASA appears to be further along than China in developing rockets, spacecraft, and landers to send astronauts to the Moon's south pole in the US-led Artemis program.

Constructing a lunar comm system and GPS will greatly facilitate extended operations there.

The US space agency is not developing any lunar data relay satellites on its own. Instead, NASA is relying on commercial companies to build and launch relay stations for future US and international (non-Chinese) landers going to the lunar far side. Intuitive Machines, which last month accomplished the first soft landing on the Moon by a US spacecraft since 1972, is one of the companies designing a lunar data relay network.

With this relay network, Intuitive Machines could provide communications support for its own missions exploring the far side of the Moon or sell its services to other companies and space agencies. The first satellite in Intuitive Machines' data relay constellation is slated to launch late this year.

The European Space Agency and British company SSTL are also partnering on a data relay satellite for the Moon, called Lunar Pathfinder. ESA has an agreement with NASA to launch Lunar Pathfinder on a US commercial rocket in 2026.

[GreenGoo]

Musk's goal is for Starship to reach orbit by the end of this year and for Super Heavy to come online soon after. He intends to fly passengers around the moon by 2023 (I think that's still the target). The first trip is reserved for a Japanese billionaire and eight companions of his choice.

I don't see any problems with ferrying extremely wealthy patrons into dangerous environs using unregulated metal tins.

Should work out great. Musk is a visionary.

[Blackhawk]

Something something Titanic.

[raydude]

Musk's goal is for Starship to reach orbit by the end of this year and for Super Heavy to come online soon after. He intends to fly passengers around the moon by 2023 (I think that's still the target). The first trip is reserved for a Japanese billionaire and eight companions of his choice.

I don't see any problems with ferrying extremely wealthy patrons into dangerous environs using unregulated metal tins.

Should work out great. Musk is a visionary.

<crosses fingers> Please let him invite Musk, please let him invite Musk.

[jztemple2]

Something something Titanic.

Something something Titan submersible

[Blackhawk]

Something something Titanic.

Something something Titan submersible

Which became famous while exploring the Titanic.

[Punisher]

Musk's goal is for Starship to reach orbit by the end of this year and for Super Heavy to come online soon after. He intends to fly passengers around the moon by 2023 (I think that's still the target). The first trip is reserved for a Japanese billionaire and eight companions of his choice.

I don't see any problems with ferrying extremely wealthy patrons into dangerous environs using unregulated metal tins.

Should work out great. Musk is a visionary.

Safe to say that's no longer the target date?

[Victoria Raverna]

Have they able to get around the 4 years limitation on mission to Mars because of harmful radiations?

[Unagi]

Have they able to get around the 4 years limitation on mission to Mars because of harmful radiations?

You tell me:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9916691/

Concerning the astronaut limits, our results confirm that stochastic effects, in particular cancer, represent the main concern for GCR exposure, since the limits for non-cancer effects would be respected even in a 650-day Mars mission at solar minimum. According to these calculations, in this scenario, 10 g/cm2 Al shielding would allow the 1 Sv career limit adopted by ESA and RSA, as well as most of the age- and sex-dependent limits established by JAXA, to be respected; possible exceptions would be the JAXA limits for males younger than 30 years old and females younger than 40. However, by applying the NASA limit of 600 mSv, according to the present calculations, no NASA astronaut could participate in a 650-day mission at solar minimum without exceeding the limit. More generally, both at solar minimum and at solar maximum, shielding of 10 g/cm2 Al seems to be a better choice than that of 20 g/cm2 for astronaut protection against GCRs.

[Kraken]

Have they able to get around the 4 years limitation on mission to Mars because of harmful radiations?

You tell me:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9916691/

Concerning the astronaut limits, our results confirm that stochastic effects, in particular cancer, represent the main concern for GCR exposure, since the limits for non-cancer effects would be respected even in a 650-day Mars mission at solar minimum. According to these calculations, in this scenario, 10 g/cm2 Al shielding would allow the 1 Sv career limit adopted by ESA and RSA, as well as most of the age- and sex-dependent limits established by JAXA, to be respected; possible exceptions would be the JAXA limits for males younger than 30 years old and females younger than 40. However, by applying the NASA limit of 600 mSv, according to the present calculations, no NASA astronaut could participate in a 650-day mission at solar minimum without exceeding the limit. More generally, both at solar minimum and at solar maximum, shielding of 10 g/cm2 Al seems to be a better choice than that of 20 g/cm2 for astronaut protection against GCRs.

A few days ago I read that a concept rejected decades ago has been revived for study: active shielding. Basically, generate a magnetic field around the spacecraft to deflect incoming particles. Long ago, the equipment needed for that was much heavier than passive shielding (usually thick aluminum or a water shell), but advances since then have changed the arithmetic. Interplanetary spacecraft might one day have actual forcefield shields.

[Kraken]

The political arena in general has been kind of dull lately, so let's talk about space policy again.

Eric Berger wrote a good preview of what might be to come. Bear in mind as you read that Berger is a big SpaceX booster, but I think his analysis is pretty sound. He does follow the nitty gritty.

Although he may not have a cabinet-appointed position, Musk will have a broad portfolio in the new administration for as long as his relations with Trump remain positive. This gives Musk extraordinary power over a number of areas, including spaceflight. Already this week, he has been soliciting ideas and input from colleagues. The New York Times reported that Musk has advised Trump to hire key employees from SpaceX into his administration, including at the Department of Defense. This reflects the huge conflict of interest that Musk will face when it comes to space policy. His actions could significantly benefit SpaceX, of which he is the majority owner and has the final say in major decisions.

It will be a hugely weird dynamic. Musk is unquestionably in a position for self-dealing. Normally, such conflicts of interest would be frowned on within a government, but Trump has already shown a brazen disregard for norms, and there's no reason to believe that will change during his second go at the presidency. One way around this could be to give Musk a "special adviser" tag, which means he would not have to comply with federal conflict-of-interest laws.

So it's entirely possible that the sitting chief executive of SpaceX could be the nation's most important adviser on space policy, conflicts be damned. Musk possesses flaws as a leader, but it is difficult to argue against results. His intuitions for the industry, such as pushing hard for reusable launch and broadband Internet from space, have largely been correct. In a vacuum, it is not necessarily bad to have someone like Musk providing a vision for US spaceflight in the 21st century. But while space may be a vacuum, there is plenty of oxygen in Washington, DC.

...

The biggest question is what to do with the Artemis program to return humans to the Moon. Ars wrote extensively about some of the challenges with this program a little more than a month ago, and Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg News, wrote a scathing assessment of Artemis recently under the headline "NASA's $100 billion Moon mission is going nowhere."

It is unlikely that outright cancellation of Artemis is on the table—after all, the first Trump administration created Artemis six years ago. However, Musk is clearly focused on sending humans to Mars, and the Moon-first approach of Artemis was championed by former Vice President Mike Pence, who is long gone. Trump loves grand gestures, and Musk has told Trump it will be possible to send humans to Mars before the end of his term. (That would be 2028, and it's almost impossible to see this happening for a lot of reasons.) The Artemis architecture was developed around a "Moon-then-Mars" philosophy—as in, NASA will send humans to the Moon now, with Mars missions pushed into a nebulous future. Whatever Artemis becomes, it is likely to at least put Mars on equal footing to the Moon.

Notably, Musk despises NASA's Space Launch System rocket, a central element of Artemis. He sees the rocket as the epitome of government bloat. And it's not hard to understand why. The Space Launch System is completely expendable and costs about 10 to 100 times as much to launch as his own massive Starship rocket.

Fellow space nerds should read the whole thing.

[Kraken]

Same questions, different perspective. This reporter isn't the SpaceX cheerleader that Eric Berger is, but she mostly echoes his opinions.

TL;DR points:

Musk might cancel SLS.

While the SLS rocket has launched once in 2022 during its 15 years of construction, Musk has taken Starship from an just an idea to launching the fully stacked vehicle five times in the past few years from Texas with the use of private money. Every time SpaceX launches, they learn and improve the design, said Muncy.

"He got all of that data, and he literally changed his design multiple times," said Muncy. "The SLS design hasn't fundamentally changed. They refined parts of it. They had to figure out parts of it. But, they haven't been iterating it. They haven't been changing parts of it."
...
While neither Starship Super Heavy nor SLS are ready just yet, it's not inconceivable that a Trump administration would opt to just proceed with the Starship Super Heavy as the Artemis launch vehicle. That would mean reimagining Artemis, Muncy said.

"If you can launch Starship a whole bunch of times from the surface of the Earth to Earth orbit, and a Starship can be refueled in orbit, and go fly to the vicinity of the moon, and then fly from lunar orbit down to the surface of the moon ... why don't you just launch the people on Starship from the very beginning?"

Launch regulations will get a whole lot looser, especially environmental impact regs.

Mars will move up in general aspirations.

[jztemple2]

My take on the above.

Musk might cancel SLS.

Perhaps in the long term, after the Artemis IV launch when Deep Space Transport LLC, which is a joint venture between Boeing and Northrup Grumman, is scheduled to take over the SLS program. Texas and Florida are both deeply involved in SLS and whatever Musk might want, he still has to deal with Congress. And with Trump nominating Floridians for Secretary of State and Attorney General, that's a lot of political pressure to keep SLS going for now.

Launch regulations will get a whole lot looser, especially environmental impact regs.

That's possible, but again, trying to loosen the environmental impacts in Texas might not be that popular with Texans. And one "ah shit" launch that messes with Texas soil or wildlife is going to bring down Congress on Musk.

Mars will move up in general aspirations.

Yup, no doubt about that. And I'm afraid that it will be the unmanned launches that will have to cough up the money. After all, JPL is in California, not the most popular state with the incoming administration.

[Kraken]

Yeah SLS has broad political support -- at one point Congress mandated its use to launch, um, Europa Clipper, I think it was. But a rocket designed 15+ years ago that costs a couple billion per launch and can fly once a year at most is going to be hard to defend once Starship and Super Heavy are routinely launching for a fraction of the price. I think the plan will hold up through Artemis III, but Orion and Gateway are going to look pretty superfluous if Starship can make the trip from LEO to the lunar surface and back on its own. I believe SpaceX is planning to demonstrate orbital refueling next year; that's key.