FOLLOWING 11 YEARS in which the space agency has had no launch capability of its own, NASA will soon attempt to fly its huge Space Launch System (SLS) booster for the first time. A few minutes after liftoff, the Orion spacecraft will separate from the rocket and zip into orbit around the moon for more than a month. No astronauts will be on board this much delayed initial flight. But on later flights, some will.
NASA has heavily promoted this first Artemis mission as a return to human moon missions. Because Artemis superficially resembles the Apollo Program, it would be easy to dismiss it as a mere rehash. The SLS looks a lot like the Saturn V that launched six Apollo missions to the surface of the moon. And while the Orion spacecraft is roomier and hosts modern avionics in its guts, in essence it is a larger version of the Apollo capsule. Our Chinese rivals mocked NASA for just striving to relive past glories, and even President Barack Obama in 2010 denigrated the idea of returning human beings to the moon as “been there, done that.” Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon, sat in the front row as Obama said that, fuming quietly.
But Artemis is different. NASA’s new space exploration plan is beginning as the agency starts to embrace the commercial space industry. Although the big SLS rocket and Orion were funded more than a decade ago through cost-plus contracts designed to reward such familiar corporate partners as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, more recent deals have gone through a genuinely competitive award process.
Significantly, in April 2021 Elon Musk’s SpaceX beat a hand-ful of serious competitors for a $2.89 billion contract to use its futuristic, silvery vehicle to land astronauts on the moon. While and SLS can take prospective moonwalkers to lunar orbit, NASA still needed a lander to carry humans to and from the surface. In a striking contrast with its earlier contracts, SpaceX did not create at NASA’s request. The company built the large rocket to one day fly human beings to Mars, an audacious but no longer insurmountable goal. SpaceX had invested billions in the project by the time NASA expressed interest, NASA was able to buy a service—lunar landings—for a fraction of what other companies were offering.
