Artemis - back to the moon?

[-philip-]

I've been reading about the NASA Artemis program, the first woman and next man will step foot on the moon before 2023. Exciting stuff. 

Having been born after the moon landings, I had resigned myself to perhaps never seeing this kind of exploration in my lifetime.

NASA still need Billions of $$ to make it happen. Do you think we will see a manned mission to the moon in the next 3 years?

[Guest]

I think that it depends on how the world economy fares. It is a bit wobbly at the moment. If there is a change in US government the decision may be overturned as it has been a few times previously. Although the hardware is in planning and production this time. Time will tell.

Edited September 27, 2020 by Guest
Added text.

[PEMS]

I seriously doubt it before 2023. Almost simply insufficent equipment to perform such a venture again.

They have no Saturn 5 and it was considered inefficent, no shuttle of any apparent sort. Is the US still using Russian craft to get their astronauts up to the space station? Believe they are so how do they think they can manage a moon launch, they cannot presently get to orbit.

Additionally they are still funding the James Webb and that gets delayed and delayed and sucks in money. The figures of the James Webb make pretty horrendous reading and in more relevance point to really poor project management. With the James Webb experience and the late delievery and over run on costs I cannot see NASA managing to make a case for such an endevour.

The James Webb ST makes both interesting and frightening reading. They seem afraid to consider a launch and consider just pulling it all. Either option seems to scare NASA and in a way understandably, so they just keep it rolling along somewhere on planet Earth and to an extent wasting money.

I don't foresee a moon shot from the US, China maybe, Russia doubtful. Maybe the question will be "Why bother?"

[ScouseSpaceCadet]

It's happening, but 2024 was a hard goal before the pandemic, so I'm sceptical we will manage boots on the ground by then, but fully expect at least Artemis II completed.

Development of SLS, Orion and the contracted landers is moving along. So much money would be wasted if the project was halted, so the landing and subsequent base will happen *soon*...

 

 

[discardedastro]

13 minutes ago, PEMS said:

I seriously doubt it before 2023. Almost simply insufficent equipment to perform such a venture again.

They've got the launch vehicles, and crucially rapid turnaround capability. Putting the required lander/vehicle assembly together and into orbit isn't that hard - Falcon Heavy would provide adequate capacity, and they could readily launch in pieces and build up in orbit if they needed to get something larger across.

But I doubt that'll happen for 2023. Artemis has focused on SLS which while it will undoubtedly produce a rocket, it's something so cost-inefficient it's unlikely it'll ever see much use. That appears to be starting to - beside the now-frequent Falcon flights and promising flights from Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, and others - become obvious to NASA admins, so I expect that some repurposing will occur to exclude SLS or at least remove it from the "must use" stack. But we'll see. Dragon and other crewed vehicles aren't going to stand still, either.

[Stu]

Just watched the engine test, all eight minutes of it; enough to get into orbit apparently. Pretty impressive!

I do hope they carry on with this given all the effort already expended. The whole programme looks amazing if completed, although I must say NASA tech looks pretty old school now compared with SpaceX.
 

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