NASA’s $93B Artemis Moon Project Price Tag Is ‘Unsustainable’

Real Clear Policy ^ | September 21, 2022 | Adam Andrzejewski

[Reno89519]

While average Americans are excited the United States is planning to send people back to the moon through NASA’s Artemis project, the space agency’s inspector general said the cost is “unsustainable,” Fox News reported.

NASA Inspector General Paul K. Martin predicted that the first four missions will cost $4.1 billion each and told Congress that price "strikes us as unsustainable."

He projected that by 2025, NASA will have spent $93 billion on the Artemis lunar program.

The price tag is far more than the space agency’s lunar program was projected to cost a decade ago, CNBC reported.

In 2012, NASA officials estimated each mission would cost about $500 million, with the first rocket shooting off in 2017.

Now, the cost has increased eightfold, according to the NASA auditor.

Artemis I was originally scheduled to take off the last week of August but weather and hardware concerns postponed the launch.

NASA engineers had been unable to get the engines to the proper temperature range required to start them at liftoff, Fox News reported.

Launch controllers also had to deal with storms in the area that delayed propellant loading operations, as well as “a leak at the quick disconnect on the 8-inch line used to fill and drain core stage liquid hydrogen and a hydrogen leak from a valve used to vent the propellant from the core stage intertank,” Fox News reported.

[SmokingJoe]

Well, the Apollo program was ended in 1972 with Apollo 17, due to coats mainly, plus landing on the moon had been accomplished.
I think they'd be better off letting outfits like SpaceX handle the next landings on the moon, albeit Artemis still uses SpaceX Starship Lander to actually land on the moon.

[dragnet2]

I don’t know how they were able to accomplish that with zero diversity. Diversity makes us great! The first time in human history man goes to the moon and back, yet very little or no diversity greatness? I’m not sure how they were capable of achieving that.

Btw, the leftist hate that America was the first. That’s why in public government schools they give it little or no attention to that history. Ask some kid who was the first to step foot on the lunar surface, and most wouldn’t have a clue.

[Nifster]

Not as usual. They start out with one set of specs and are going along everything is in target. Then some “bright guy” decides they want to do more and it should be easy. It ain’t easy and it busts the budget

Stick to the original plan

[Travis McGee]

Wakanda Forever!

[Travis McGee]

“IN THE NEWS!”

With War Raging in Ukraine, NASA Astronaut Flies to ISS Aboard Russian Rocket

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/with-war-raging-in-ukraine-nasa-astronaut-flies-to-iss-aboard-russian-rocket/ar-AA125LeW

The Soyuz rocket took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

A new crew has successfully reached the International Space Station following the successful launch and docking of the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft. The Expedition 68 crew will spend the next six months in low Earth orbit running science experiments and maintaining the orbital outpost, despite political tensions on the ground.

NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, along with Roscosmos astronauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, flew aboard a Soyuz MS-22 crew ship on Wednesday. The Soyuz rocket lifted off at 9:54 a.m. ET from the Baikonur Cosmodrome launch pad in Kazakhstan against a picturesque sunset backdrop.

About three hours and 12 minutes into its flight, the capsule performed a flawless docking at the Rassvet module on the Russian side of the space station, arriving at the ISS at 1:06 p.m. ET (a few minutes ahead of schedule). The hatches between the Soyuz spacecraft and the space station opened around two hours later, with the existing crew welcoming the newcomers to their new digs.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Vehicle communications are multiplexed, so you don’t need much wire.

I just rented a Hyundai Sonata for ten days. Nice car, but it made SO MANY blasted beeps and boops at me that I had no idea what it was complaining about.

Once I saw the dash message say “Car in front is leaving.” I think the designers were too polite to write “Put your damn phone down and DRIVE.” That was a nice feature.

I think it was complaining if I got too far to the left or right in my lane, but I’m not sure.

[Travis McGee]

Photo from the last successful launch of a NASA astronaut to the ISS. See story above.

"The Soyuz rocket took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan."

Meanwhile, NASA's Artemis is being tested for leaks.....again.

[SmokingJoe]

Yes.
And a Russian cosmonaut is flying with the next SpaceX Falcon 9/Dragon flight to the ISS in a coupla weeks.

[Travis McGee]

I agree. Was this neglect, incompetence, or sabotage?

How do we get out of this death spiral?

[dragnet2]

Vehicle communications are multiplexed, so you don’t need much wire.

There you go, totally over engineered. Grandma's car has multiplexed communications. Just what everyone needs.

[ComputerGuy]

How’s that Muslim reach-out going?

[Pollard]

[Travis McGee]

Turnabout if fair play. A cosmonaut going up on one of Elon Musk’s >privately built< workhorse reusable reliable “Model T” Falcons.

[Meanwhile, NASA is checking Artemis for leaks....again.]

“Falcon Heavy #2 (SpaceX) Launch & Landing”

(Just a random cool Falcon video plucked from YooToob. 3 minutes of awesome. 2 boosters landing at same time. I have been an avid space fan since the nuns rolled out the TV on wheels for grade school “assemblies” circa mid 1960s to watch the first Gemeni space walks and so on. And I am more impressed by Musk landing boosters than watching Falcons go up! And I get up day or night to watch every NE trajectory launch, which is every other week or so here in NE Florida.)

“Falcon Heavy #2 (SpaceX) Launch & Landing” [3 minute video]

This is “Buck Rogers” stuff, sticking the landings, and I’m blown away every time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY-fSnKTLqw&ab_channel=connorshafran

[Travis McGee]

Great GIFs!

I am more blown away watching them stick the landing than watching them ride the fire into space. Pure Buck Rogers.

Salute to Elon Musk.

[adorno]

Please try to help me understand what happened in the last half century.

Democrats happened.

Like with the military spending (democrats never liked spending on the military), space spending was considered wasteful and needless, when, according to democrats, there were more pressing needs, like spending on social programs.

It took Trump to recommit to spending on space exploration, and in creation of "Space Force".

There was always research and development for rockets and space vehicles and satellites and space probes, but not as a commitment for going back to space and the moon. Many people, democrats and republicans alike, felt that, spending on manned space missions was unnecessary since, many of those missions could be unmanned, like flights around Mars and Mars Landers, and missions to the outer planets with probes that just swing by,taking photos and using instruments to measure the environments on and around those planets and moons. With the kind of thinking of the last 50+ years, we might never see fruitful missions again, at least not in our lifetimes.

[mcshot]

And the Moonies are gonna kick our arse this time.

[markman46]

China manned space effort is a copy of russan space hardware

[NorthMountain]

Maybe they could hire a team of Russian engineers

So they can blow it to smithereens on the launch pad like the N-1? NYET, thankyouverymuch!

Now, if they went down to South Padre Island, they might find people worth talking to.

Maybe.

If they looked carefully.

[Crusher138]

I read that because the moon missions were 50+ years ago and we used contractors for a lot of the engineering, much of the expertise was lost. Companies didn’t keep records. NASA has the specs they sent them, but HOW they were made has been lost. The engineers that pulled this off are dead or in nursing homes. They waited too long to go back and too much has been forgotten.

At least to do the same way we did then.

[Captain Peter Blood]

What a disaster, NASA is now a failure. There are 80 year old engineers with slide rules who could work out all the problems right now. Otherwise turn it all over the Musk and let him do it.