U.S. Politics Setting NASA’s Return-to-the-Moon Date

March 27, 2019 – It was Cold War politics that drove the timetable for the space race of the 1960s. The United States had yielded the high ground of space to the Soviet Union in the early 60s and then caught up and beat them to a lunar landing with Apollo 11 in July of 1969. Since then no one, other than the Pentagon occasionally, has dictated NASA’s timetable for human spaceflight, that is, until now.

It seems that Donald Trump, fresh from the Mueller Report’s conclusions that he was not colluding with Russia in 2016, feels that a second term will have him in the White House until 2024. So that’s the date he wants NASA to meet in returning American astronauts to the Moon’s surface.

The announcement was made yesterday at a National Space Council Meeting in Huntsville, Alabama, by Vice President Mike Pence, who gave a speech in which he called for “a major course correction,” in the country’s lunar timetable as well as plans to unleash “America’s private pioneers” in low-Earth orbit, giving over that area of space to them. He further stated that NASA “must focus on the mission over the means.” 

Just what exactly does “means” mean?

In government parlance, the word “means” translates to money. So was Pence saying that NASA is expected to make the 2024 date using the dollars at hand to meet the President’s vanity project deadline?

The latest budget request from Trump certainly didn’t seem to reflect his new ambitions. But maybe that was because the Mueller Report hadn’t yet been tabled and he wasn’t sure he’d be around for a 2024 lunar landing. In fact, the Trump budget request gave NASA less than what it received in 2018. But Congressional budget appropriations signed February 15th, increased the NASA budget to $21.5 billion for this year, $1.6 billion more than Trump wanted, and $800 million more than 2018.

Who may be the biggest loser in this “course correction?” 

For Boeing and its much-delayed and over-budget Space Launch System (SLS), this could be the beginning of the end.

Pence stated in his speech that the administration isn’t “committed to any one contractor. If our current contractors can’t meet this objective, then we’ll find ones that will. If American industry can provide critical commercial services without government development, then we’ll buy them. And if commercial rockets are the only way to get American astronauts to the Moon in the next five years, then commercial rockets it will be.”

Other than Boeing there is only one commercial space company ready to fit the criteria established in Pence’s words. It is SpaceX, and it will be interesting to see if the SLS project is moth-balled, something that I conjectured in a posting earlier this month.

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy is a likely replacement for SLS. Its second launch is coming up next week carrying a commercial telecommunications satellite to geosynchronous orbit. With proven reusability demonstrated in its demonstration flight, the Falcon Heavy could meet NASA’s 2024 timetable. Or the SpaceX Starship, the former BFR, currently in design and expected to undergo short-hop testing over the next few months, could become the 2024 launch vehicle. And SpaceX could accelerate Starship development if it were to receive a contract from NASA rather than continue to build the new launch system on its own dime. And it should be noted that SpaceX has had its own plans to send a Starship to land on the Moon with 2024 the potential landing date. So maybe this could become NASA’s 2024 lunar mission.

The only other contender is Blue Origin but the New Glenn rocket has yet to appear on the scene, and Jeff Bezos’ company with its current New Shepard launch vehicle is still a system designed to give rich tourists a ride to the edge of space and no more.

Before the Pence speech, NASA had announced 2028 as the timeline for American astronauts to return to the Moon. An in-orbit space station called the Lunar Gateway was to be the next big project along with a test flight to cislunar space using an unmanned Orion capsule. Whether the Lunar Gateway is needed has been questioned by some former NASA astronauts and administrators. So with these new marching orders from the President, will the Agency dispense with it and go for a landing in Apollo-style? or maybe Starship style?

What purpose will landing American astronauts on the Moon serve in 2024?

For Trump, it isn’t just bragging rights but rather a statement to Russia, China, Europe and other spacefaring nations that the United States owns the high-ground of space.

And on the Moon, not just any space, because Pence announced the location for that 2024 landing, the Moon’s south pole. The evidence of ice located in deep craters at the pole is a compelling argument for a mission there even though navigating to the locale is far more complicated than anything attempted by the Apollo Program. But once there the ice would serve as an in-situ resource to be harvested for oxygen, hydrogen, and water.

Why Pence announced Nuclear-Powered rockets

And just to make it even more interesting, Pence announced in Huntsville that NASA step up efforts to build a nuclear-powered rocket, something NASA abandoned over four decades ago.

Why now? Because Russia recently announced its plans to build a nuclear-powered rocket. Now this is coming from a country and Roscosmos space agency that has insufficent funds to do much more than service ISS, and which has yet to build a next-generation booster rocket for human spaceflight, or complete the construction and testing of its next-generation capsule designed to carry cosmonauts and replace the more than 51-year old Soyuz.

And of course there is China with its latest feat, landing a robotic spacecraft on the far-side of the Moon, and plans announced to build a nuclear-powered propulsion system for a future a space shuttle to be launched by no later than 2040.

Pence’s exact words on nuclear power in space call for it to be used “to extract water from the permanently shadowed craters of the South Pole; and to fly on a new generation of spacecraft that will enable us to reach Mars not in years but in months.”

Delivering a small modular reactor to the surface of the Moon is viable. NASA has some experience in using nuclear materials to power some of its missions, for example, the Mars rover Curiosity, and the New Horizons robotic spacecraft that flew past Pluto and Ultima Thule. But neither of these systems contained the size of power plant Pence is talking about that would be used to power up a lunar colony, and convert lunar ice to water, oxygen, and hydrogen.

The 2019 NASA budget for its nuclear-powered rocket technology is $150 million Compare that to the $14 billion already spent on SLS, and the more than $2 billion in this year’s budget for the Boeing-built rocket, and you realize that the Agency may have to do some quick fiscal retooling if the Vice President’s words are to be turned into reality.

What is the promise of nuclear-powered rockets?

Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) technology would cut travel times to and from Mars by half. That means far less exposure to cosmic rays for the onboard crew. And also means less need for in-situ resource extraction to create the chemical fuels that would be needed for a return to Earth. There would still be a need for Mars resource extraction for oxygen, water, and hydrogen, but not to the same extent.

The latest NTP design calls for the use of low-enriched uranium fuel rather than plutonium, and new materials to eliminate corrosion, a problem that occurred in NASA’s NERVA project more than forty years ago when the Agency made its first attempt at nuclear propulsion.