Rerun: The Artemis Program

NASA is soliciting applications for its astronaut program in anticipation of sending men and women to the Moon. Learn all about the Artemis program, its goals and what comes next!

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jovan Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts. Send how the
tech are you? So? Initially I had planned to have
a brand new episode because we have so few left

(00:24):
before I hand the show over to new hosts. But unfortunately,
in the process of putting that show together, I had
multiple no this is ironic technological failures that have set
me back. So rather than go without an episode today,
I thought one thing we could do is revisit an
episode that published a couple of years ago about the

(00:48):
Artemis program. This is the program at NASA that it
aims to return astronauts to the surface of the Moon.
Now that particular program has recently it's been announced that
it's had some setbacks, some delays, not a big surprise.
There have been a lot of issues going on with

(01:09):
NASA and spacecraft in general, and so now the mission
that would send astronauts to do a flyby of the Moon,
they would pass behind the Moon and then come back
to Earth. That is pushed back to twenty twenty six,
and hopefully we would once again have astronauts on the
Moon's surface by twenty twenty seven. Whether that happens or

(01:32):
not remains to be seen, but I thought perhaps it
would be a good idea to revisit this episode the
Artemis program and kind of reflect on the mission itself,
like why does the mission exist, what are its goals,
and what potentially could we gain from this, keeping in

(01:54):
mind that it's frequently impossible to predict what you could
gain because these missions come with them certain massive challenges
the engineers have to figure out how to solve, and
in the process of solving those challenges, we can sometimes
uncover the possibility for technologies that can benefit us in

(02:15):
other ways, not just in order to survive on the
Moon's surface, but do other stuff. And so it's really impossible,
I would argue, to anticipate what benefits we could see
beyond just the mission accomplished section of these sorts of things,
And in my mind, that's a great reason to pursue

(02:35):
these really challenging goals. Now, should we pursue the challenging
goal of going back to the Moon as opposed to
some other challenging goal. That's a different discussion, one that
I think is also worth having I don't think, you know,
it's a zero sum game necessarily, but ultimately we do
have to start prioritizing what we're focusing on, what we're

(02:58):
dedicating resources to, and in the process we might come
to the conclusion that one pursuit is more worthy than another.
And we'll really see how that shakes out once the
new administration takes power here in the United States, and
whether or not we see a more aggressive approach toward

(03:20):
space exploration. I would certainly expect that to happen, considering
that Elon Musk, you know, he has a private space company,
and he's real buddy buddy with the President elect. So
if I had to wager, I would say that we'd
see a lot more space stuff in twenty twenty five.
But in the meantime, let's listen to this episode the

(03:42):
Artemis Program, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Today we're going to talk about space and NASA's most
recent program, intended to put American astronauts back on the
Moon and eventually to go beyond the Moon. But first
let's do a quick look back into the history of

(04:04):
the space program. So back in the early nineteen sixties,
the United States was in a fierce competition with the
then Soviet Union. The Soviets had shocked Americans upon the
launch of the satellite Sputnik that was the first man
made object launched into orbit around the Earth. Sputnik didn't

(04:25):
really do a whole lot other than send out a
little beep of a radio signal as it traveled miles
above the Earth's surface, but the implications of that launch
were enormous. First, the fact that the Soviets could launch
an object into orbit suggested that the USSR also had
the capability of launching, say, you know, a missile somewhere else,

(04:50):
like across the world at the United States. Coupled with
a nuclear warhead. That was a chilling thought. The US
and the USSR held a great deal of animosity for
each other, which is putting it lightly, or at least
the governments of those countries did, and each government supported
an awful lot of propaganda aimed at vilifying the other side.

(05:13):
As a child of the eighties, I remember a lot
of sort of anti Soviet, anti Russian kind of messaging
in pop culture and beyond well, anyway, the second part
of this is that the world is a stage, as
Shakespeare once wrote, and on that stage, the Soviets were
poised to take on the role of most technologically and

(05:34):
scientifically advanced nation on the planet, and that was something
that the US government wasn't too keen on either, and
so there was a very strong incentive to give the
US space industry its own shot in the arm to
catch up and then ultimately to pass the Soviet space program.
The space race would showcase the best and worst of

(05:57):
human traits. Among the best were ingenuity, problem solving, collaboration, exploration,
and curiosity. Among the worst, you had pride, you had
boasting not to mention the fact that the finish line
kept getting pushed back whenever one side would achieve something notable,
like you might say, oh, well, really, the real test

(06:19):
is to put the first person up in space, And
then the Soviets did that, and the Americans said, well, really,
the real test is docking two spacecraft in space together.
And then the Americans did that, and the Soviets said, well, really,
it's and so they kept pushing that back until finally
it got to the real goal isn't to put something

(06:39):
into orbit, but to get to the Moon, and that
was viewed as the ultimate goal. The ultimate finish line. Now,
I mean, for reals, a lot of the space race
was really just about moving those goal posts so that
one side could not easily declare victory and superiority over
the other side. And yes, it is more than a
little bit childish. It might remind you of kids playing

(07:02):
a game where they keep changing the rules whenever it
seems like they're losing. However, that childish desire is also
what helped drive and perhaps more importantly, fund the actual
engineering and science that would lead to some of the
greatest achievements in human history. These are achievements that would
spin off numerous beneficial technologies that we rely upon and

(07:23):
benefit from today. Anyway, in nineteen sixty three, the US
Space Agency NASA initiated a new program named Apollo, and
this was an official response to a promise that had
been made in nineteen sixty one by US President John F. Kennedy.
He announced a commitment to get astronauts to the Moon

(07:44):
by the end of that decade. Now, in Greek mythology,
Apollo is the son of Zeus. He's the god of
the arts, of poetry and of the Sun. The Apollo
missions saw several successful Moon landings, beginning with Apollo eleven
in July nineteen sixty nine and ending with Apollo seventeen
in December nineteen seventy two. The program also had its

(08:08):
share of tragedy. In nineteen sixty seven, three astronauts died
in a pre flight test when a fire broke out
in the cockpit of the command module. NASA would later
designate this mission, originally known as Apollo two oh four
Apollo one, in an effort to honor the three astronauts
who lost their lives in this accident. Apollo seventeen would

(08:30):
mark the last time a human would set foot on
the Moon, and that stands true up to the date
of this recording. No human has been back to the
Moon since December nineteen seventy two. And that's what brings
us to today's topic, because once again NASA and numerous
partnering companies and organizations are looking to send people back

(08:52):
to the Moon's surface. This time, the goal is to
include women astronauts in the project, something that just did
happen back in the sixties and seventies. The new program
is called Artemis. Now, like Apollo, the name Artemis comes
to us from Greek mythology, she's actually Apollo's twin sister,

(09:13):
which makes sense. This is sort of the twin sister
project to Apollo. Now. Frankly, I would argue Artemis is
much better suited as a name for this project because
she's the goddess of the Moon. She's also the goddess
of the wilderness and hunting and other stuff. The Greek
gods were famous multitaskers. As goddess of the Moon, she

(09:34):
does have the perfect name for the NASA endeavor to
put people up there. She did not just spring into being,
either in mythology or in the space project. In space terms,
Artemis follows some earlier attempts to get astronauts back to
the Moon. She's sort of the evolution of some earlier
programs that have since been either canceled or just transformed.

(09:56):
So this means we need to look at a span
of time between the Apollo missions and the upcoming Artemis missions.
In the first decade of the twenty first century, NASA
announced a program called Constellation. The scope of Constellation was
pretty darned big. It laid out the many advances NASA

(10:17):
identified as being pivotal for the most extensive missions to
the Moon and beyond. It called for the retirement of
the Space Shuttle program. It was already on its way out.
And so the reason for that was that the Space
Shuttle program was limited in its ability. Really could only
go into orbit. It can't go to the Moon or beyond.

(10:37):
And also the Columbia disaster had brought up serious questions
about the viability of the Space Shuttle program. In general,
it was an aging fleet of spacecraft. So this particular
Constellation program laid out requirements for a new type of
spacecraft called Orion, also known as the Crew Exploration Vehicle,

(10:59):
and it's similar to the old Apollo capsules, but it's
actually larger and has a lot more features and could
support a crew of astronauts on a mission to the
Moon and back or extended trips to the International Space Station.
I'll talk more about the Orion in detail a little
bit later. So the Constellation program, in turn was a

(11:20):
response to a call from the US President, George W. Bush,
and he was asking NASA to really shoot for these goals.
He wanted something really aspirational and inspirational to kind of
get people excited about this. Presidents tend to do this,
by the way, when they need a kind of a
boost in their own popularity. It's great that we benefit

(11:43):
from it from a scientific perspective, but it does not
always come from a genuine desire to push science. Sometimes
that desire is more linked to the politics of the
situation than the actual scientific goal of the situation. And
in fact, there are plenty of people who argued that

(12:04):
this whole approach was not the right thing for NASA
to do, that putting people back on the Moon didn't
really solve any big issues or didn't open up any
other opportunities we had already been to the moon. People
were arguing that maybe we wouldn't be able to learn
anything new by going back to the Moon, that we

(12:24):
should instead dedicate our efforts toward other things. But the
Moon is one of those things that's easy to point
at and say that is a big challenge, how do
we get back there? And then you can worry about
the other stuff later on down the line. I think
that there is value going back to the moon. By
the way, I don't want to dismiss it out of hand,

(12:44):
but I can see the validity of arguments that state
maybe we should look at other goals instead. Goals that
might have a more obvious payout in either the benefits
we get from technological advancement or the direct result of
the missions themselves. So I could see both sides of

(13:05):
both arguments, and so I haven't I guess I haven't
really fully made up my mind of which side I
really subscribed to anyway, So we get this deadline set
for this idea of going back to the Moon. The vehicle,
the Orion spacecraft, was supposed to be ready by twenty fourteen,

(13:28):
and then you had the goal of actually getting people
back on the Moon by twenty twenty. It is twenty twenty,
and spoiler alert, that ain't gonna happen this year. NASA
Administrator Michael Griffin unveiled this plan in two thousand and five,
and that included a plan for two new rocket systems
that would provide the umph needed to get the Orion

(13:49):
spacecraft out into space on its way to the Moon
or the International Space Station. And those rockets were the
Ares one and the Ares five launch vehicles No. Two
and three just one in five, and they were or four,
I should say, but one in five were also meant
to kind of mirror the Saturn one and Saturn five

(14:10):
rockets that were used in previous NASA programs. ARES one
was the smaller of the two rockets. That one was
intended to launch payloads like the Orion spacecraft and its
crew into orbit. The ARES five would be a heavy
lifting rocket and it would be used to launch significance
amounts of a payload into space of cargo. So if

(14:31):
you wanted to create, say a Moon station, you know,
to actually build a station on the Moon, you would
use a series of ARES five rockets to launch those
payloads into space, and then presumably you would find a
way of getting them to the Moon for construction. So
it's not that different from models like SpaceX, where they

(14:52):
have the Falcon nine rocket or launch vehicle that can
send a capsule into space, or the Falcon nine heavy
which is meant to push much heavier payloads into space.
Developing the rockets would be another really big task on
top of building this Orion spacecraft, But this was a

(15:13):
thing that Griffin thought was necessary. Lunar missions are going
to require a lot of support systems in order to
make sure the astronauts can get to the Moon, they
can land there, they can operate on the Moon, and
then they can return from the Moon safely back to Earth.
That requires a lot of work. So, according to NASA estimates,
relying on older launch vehicles like the Delta or Atlas

(15:34):
rockets would require many more launches to get the required
equipment back into space. So that would drive up the
cost of the program. And Griffin was saying, well, it's
going to cost a huge amount of money to develop
new rockets, but it will cost another huge amount of
money if we rely on older rockets because we'll have
to use more of them. And so he was weighing

(15:56):
those two options and ultimately decided that it made more
sense to push for brand new launch systems. Now, spoiler alert,
this whole plan that was laid out in two thousand
and five did not pan out, at least not as
Constellation had laid it all out. We didn't have a
spacecraft ready in time, nor are we ready to put

(16:19):
anyone on the Moon this year. And one of the
main contributors to the shortfall was down to budget. The
original Apollo program had a budget of twenty five point
eight billion dollars from nineteen sixty to nineteen seventy three.
If we adjust that for inflation and look at it

(16:39):
in today's money, that would come out to about two
hundred sixty billion dollars, a truly princely sum. But that
was across the entire lifespan of the Apollo program, not
just one particular year. In nineteen sixty six, the peak
year the Apollo program. From a vedgetary perspective, the agency

(17:01):
spent the equivalent of forty seven point eight billion dollars
in today's money, and that was just for the Apollo program.
So the budget for all of NASA in two thousand
and five, not just Constellation, but all the programs that
NASA oversees was fifteen point six billion dollars. That's a

(17:21):
lot less than forty seven point eight billion. Trust me,
I ran the math. Even adjusted for inflation, that comes
out to just under seventeen billion dollars. It is an
enormous amount less than what was spent in nineteen sixty six,
or the equivalent of what was spent in nineteen sixty six.
And yet Griffin was describing Constellation as Apollo on steroids.

(17:44):
So that got a lot of people asking, can you
really design Apollo on steroids if you're using a budget
that's less than half of what Apollos program spent in
nineteen sixty six, So this was a question, and then
a lot of people were asking, and ultimately the answer
appears to be no, you can't really do it. So

(18:06):
despite having access to less money, NASA still really tackled
this challenge. I mean a lot of people poured a
ton of work and effort into trying to make this happen.
In two thousand and nine, the agency released a statement
saying the Orion would not be ready for a twenty
fourteen launch. They were hoping that they could maybe make
it a twenty fifteen deadline. But here's the thing. While

(18:31):
on the surface that says, oh, it's a delay of
just one year, that's actually not that bad, especially when
you consider the budgetary restraints, it actually was three years
later than what Griffin had been hoping for. He had
hoped to have the Orion ready for launch by twenty twelve,
So now they were sure it wasn't going to be
ready till at least twenty fifteen. The agency was really
trying to narrow a gap that was going to exist

(18:53):
when the space shuttles retired and the USA would no
longer have a spacecraft capable of launching and docking with
the newly finished International Space Station. So the ISS gets
finished around twenty ten at the same time the space
Shuttle program retires. Now the USA is reliant on other

(19:14):
countries and their space program in order to get astronauts
to and from the space station, typically Russia, so that's
not ideal, and they were waiting on commercial space companies
like SpaceX to catch up, but that just hadn't happened yet.
So the real hope was that the Orion spacecraft could

(19:35):
take over those duties and make USA independent of other
countries and also of commercial spacecraft companies, where NASA would
be owning and operating these vehicles. But that just wasn't
going to happen. That gap was going to get wider
and wider, not narrower. NASA did have a cost overrun
of three point one billion dollars, though again this was

(19:58):
much less than what the agents he spent during the
Apollo program years. But that delay of the program and
the twenty six percent overrun in costs gave Constellation a
really bad reputation. That was a reputation that President Barack
Obama actually referenced back in two thousand and eight NASA
also predicted that the program would continue to cost more

(20:20):
than had been originally projected, with an increase of about
one hundred and forty percent of the original budget marked
out for the years between twenty ten and twenty fourteen.
Not great news. On top of that, the focus of
NASA was almost entirely on the Orion spacecraft and the
Areas one launch vehicle. Again no big surprise here. The

(20:42):
idea of sending people to the Moon is generally one
that people really get excited about, and excitement translates into
governments approving bigger budgets because you know, representatives want to
support the things that their constituents are really excited about.
But that meant that the ARES five rocket, the heavy

(21:03):
lifting rocket, had a much smaller development budget. All the
focus was on the crude stuff. The Orion crew doesn't crewed,
the Orion spacecraft, and the ARES one launch vehicle, not
the ARES five, but the Areas five was going to
need a lot of money. I mean, this was a
heavy lifting rocket concept. But that meant that because it

(21:24):
didn't get that big budget, the development was getting delayed
over and over again, and that led to a point
where analysts believe that based on the budgetary trajectory at NASA,
the earliest the ARES five rocket would be able to
launch the lunar landing hardware that would be necessary to
actually land on the Moon would be sometime in the

(21:44):
twenty thirties, if that were at all possible even then,
so that would delay that deadline of landing on the
Moon by more than a decade. The idea here was
that the Space Agency would put a lunar landing space
into Earth orbit, and it was to be called the
Lunar Surface Access Module or el SAM. Later it was

(22:07):
renamed the Altair and an ARIS five would launch this
Altair into Earth orbit. Because it was heavier than the
Orion spacecraft, so you wouldn't want to use like an
ARES one rocket, you need the heavy lifting rocket. There
a separate AREAS one rocket would launch an Orion spacecraft
into Earth orbit, and then the Orion spacecraft would rendezvous

(22:30):
with the orbiting Altair. The two would dock, and then
together they would make the rest of the trip to
the Moon. Upon entering lunar orbit, the two spacecraft could separate.
The entire crew of the Orion could move over into
the Altair Because the Orion would be automated and it
would just remain in orbit around the Moon. Then the
Altair would land on the Moon. The astronauts would go

(22:51):
out and you know, do moon stuff. Then they would
come back to the Altair, launch off the Moon, back
into orbit, dock with the Orion, transferred back over to
the Orion spacecraft, and then they could make the trip
back to Earth. But because of these budget limitations, the
focus on the Orion and the ares IE vehicles meant

(23:11):
that all of this other stuff, the ARES five and
the lunar module, all of that just remained hypothetical. It
was a proposal, not an actual spacecraft. So while the
agency might have produced an Orion spacecraft in time to
get into space by twenty fifteen, there was just no
hope of making enough progress to land on the Moon
any earlier than the twenty thirties, and some people thought

(23:34):
that even that was too ambitious. Meanwhile, NASA, the agency
was struggling with budget constraints in general, not just for
the Constellation program. Sometimes one project would have to siphon
funds intended for a totally different project. You had a
lot of internal battles in NASA as different project leads
would kind of squirrel budgetary money away that was intended

(23:57):
for some other project for their own. That did not
help morale in the agency, And moreover, it was never
enough to cover all the costs that were mounting up.
In twenty ten, NASA received its new budget from the
US government, and that budget listed zero for the Constellation project.
I'll explain more in just a moment, but we'll take

(24:17):
a quick break. So why did the US government pull
the plug in twenty ten on the Constellation project? Well,
it's actually pretty complicated to answer that, but it comes
down to several factors. So, for one thing, the design
specs or the various components in the Constellation project had

(24:40):
changed over time. Some of them had changed a few
times since two thousand and five. The team made various
determinations that then led them down different paths, requiring NASA
to invest more in new technologies and new designs and
launch craft. And the initial plan would have seen using
them using more components that already exist did right, that

(25:00):
were already in production. But a lot of the decisions
they made meant, oh no, we're going to have to
actually make new stuff. So that meant that the process
was going to take longer and also cost more. The
prospects didn't look promising as far as achieving goals on time,
so that was another strike against it. And you also
had the case of a change in political administrations, which

(25:23):
frequently shakes things up with government funded projects. In fact,
that's one of the biggest challenges NASA faces with space travel.
It's not just the incredibly difficult task of designing technology
capable of bringing people into space safely and back home again.
It's dealing with a changing political climate that may have
vastly different priorities than the previous administration, which in turn

(25:47):
could mean that the funding you were counting on early
in the project disappears midway through the project, and that
just means it's the end of your whole process. What
a way to run a space railroad, right, So, in
two thousand and eight, when Obama won the presidency, one

(26:08):
of the things that followed was a change in NASA administrators.
He and his advisors had a different set of priorities
than the previous administration, which included dedicating more money toward
commercial space companies like SpaceX, rather than going down the
traditional path in which NASA would contract with big companies
like Boeing or Lockheed Griffin resigned upon Obama taking office,

(26:29):
which in turn is not an unusual thing to happen
when you have a change in administrations. It's not out
of the realm of normal practice for administrators to resign.
In those cases, it often happens. His replacement would eventually
be Charles Bolden, himself a former astronaut, though it takes

(26:52):
several months before Bolden would be appointed that position and
confirmed as the new administrator of NASA. These challenges are
part of why the private space industry was able to
get a foothold. Private companies aren't beholden to a government
for their budgets, although a private company might find itself
burning through its startup cash before it can become a

(27:13):
viable business, and private space companies like SpaceX were becoming
prominent right around the same time, which in turn created
a chance to rely on those companies for key components
rather than having them all be designed or contracted through NASA.
After a committee evaluated Constellation and determine that the program
simply could not succeed given its very ambitious goals coupled

(27:36):
with its very limited resources, the project got the axe
it wasn't necessarily that the project was bad, just that
its reach was further than its grasp. NASA was to
shift money over to long range goals such as developing
new heavy lift rockets and propulsion systems to be used
in space, all with an eye toward powering missions to

(27:57):
Mars in the future. The areas rockets and the air
ryan were scrapped, at least temporarily. Congress reacted negatively to
these changes because, well mostly because they weren't included in
the decisions. Obama amended his decision after encountering intense opposition
from certain members of Congress, and he brought Oryan back

(28:20):
into the picture, so it no longer was scrapped. It
was now back on the docket, and he set a
deadline for a new launch system to be ready to
go by twenty fifteen. Congress then took that plan and
tweaked it by giving NASA the directive to repurpose the
rocket designs for the Constellation project and have that ready

(28:40):
to go by twenty sixteen. The new launch vehicle would
be called the Space Launch System or SLS. One of
Obama's advisors said it was it was pretty clear that
members of Congress were doing their best to keep contracts
with big companies that had been involved in constellation, indicating
that this might have been some sort of you know,
smoke key filled room politicking going on here rather than

(29:04):
technical discussions. One other goal in this era was to
develop a mission in which NASA would send astronauts to
an asteroid, again as sort of a staging ground for
an eventual mission to Mars. And that's where things mostly stayed.
During Obama's administration, NASA was working on developing these initiatives,
and the private space industry began to grow at the

(29:27):
same time. Now, ultimately that asteroid mission would get scrapped,
but it would stick around for quite some time. Now.
When Donald Trump won the presidency, things would change again.
So one thing you do often see with these changes
in administrations is that a succeeding administration will attempt to
set more ambitious goals than the preceding one. It's a

(29:48):
way for presidents to kind of set themselves apart and
to try and get the nation excited about some particular initiative.
So Obama's administration was looking at the Moon and asteroids,
with a further goal being Mars in the future. Trump's
approach was similar in that it was Moon and then
straight onto Mars. Now I'm not going to go into
all the budget details here except to say, despite the

(30:11):
fact that you kept seeing these lofty goals in place,
you didn't necessarily see an enormous boost in budgets at NASA,
certainly nothing close to the peak that was spent back
in nineteen sixty six with the Apollo program. The budget
fluctuated year to year. In twenty sixteen it was nineteen
billion dollars, but a year later the budget had reduced

(30:32):
down to eighteen point eight billion dollars. In twenty eighteen,
it would bounce back to nineteen point five billion, but
it kind of hovered right around that area, just under
twenty billion dollars. And there's still political battles being fought
around the subject of relying on commercial space companies like
SpaceX versus going the traditional route where NASA lands contracts

(30:56):
with specific big companies like Boeing and Lockheed in order
to build spacecraft. These battles typically play out with congressional
representatives from states that rely on big manufacturing jobs, with
those companies like Boeing and Lockheed, arguing that the key
elements of any mission should ultimately be owned and operated
by NASA. Then others say that the financially responsible thing

(31:19):
to do is to outsource this to commercial space companies,
whom they argue can do the same work but for
less money. And a lot of these arguments come down
to financial and political matters, again, not technological decisions, and
it gets really messy. Tech is way easier to explain.
In April twenty nineteen, NASA announced that the Artemis program

(31:41):
and its ambitious goal of putting a man and woman
on the Moon by twenty twenty four would become a reality.
Of course, we have to remember that elements of this
plan had been in development since two thousand and five,
but because the SLS is largely built upon the bones
of the proposed Areas five rocket design. Heck, the Orion spacecraft,

(32:01):
which will actually hold the crew of a NASA Artemis mission,
has been the one piece that's been most consistently in
development since George W. Bush was president. In February twenty twenty,
the document titled Moon twenty twenty four Mission manifest made
the rounds now. NASA has since disputed the contents of

(32:23):
this document, saying that it does not accurately reflect the
current state of the Artemis program. However, as of the
time of this recording, it's the most recent version of
the plan I can find. Everything else is kind of
gone dark, So I'll explain the manifest version of the
mission here with the caveat that things have already changed.

(32:45):
But this plan kind of gives us a peek into
the ambition surrounding the Artemis program, even if the subsequent
plan that will get announced probably right around the time
this episode publishes, might have more details. So here we go.
In a twenty twenty one, according to this manifest, NASA
would test a Block one SLS launch vehicle carrying an

(33:09):
unmanned Orion spacecraft in a mission dubbed Artemis one. So
that raises a question, what's a Block one SLS. Well,
the SLS is designed in a way that will allow
NASA to swap out elements further down the line to
give it a boost in performance. Specifically, it will allow

(33:31):
NASA to include more powerful boosters and rockets that are
intended to get a crew to Mars. But those are
still being designed and constructed, and so we don't even
have an example to point at for the more advanced ones,
and rather than wait on all of that to finish
before making any other progress, NASA has placed a strategy

(33:54):
in which an initial version of the Space Launch System
Block one will be used to get the Orion into
orbit or to send it to the Moon, and the
future will get a more powerful Block two SLS that
would be able to send the Orion and cargo to Mars.
So how does all this play out? Well, keep in

(34:15):
mind that the Block two doesn't really exist yet, so
things could change dramatically by the time we actually have
something built, if it even gets built. The Block one
SLS is the version that's currently being finalized now, and
it will have two boosters similar to the Space Shuttle,
and it will also have a core stage like a

(34:37):
central rocket tank with four engines. The pair of solid
propellant rocket boosters are really similar to what the Space
Shuttle used. In fact, some of the early SLS launch
vehicles will be using unused Space Shuttle booster casings. Then
in the future new casings will have to be made

(34:58):
because we'll have run out of ones that weren't used
in the Space Shuttle program. But the old Space Shuttle
boosters had four segments of solid propellant rocket fuel. The
Block one SLS boosters will have five segments the core stage.
That central rocket will have four engines, and it will

(35:19):
use liquid propellant. Once in space and the Orion spacecraft
separates from its launch vehicle, the Orion spacecraft will use
what is called the interim cryogenic propulsion stage to travel
to its destination, such as the Moon. This version of
the SLS will be able to send fifty seven thousand
pounds or twenty six metric tons of payload into space.

(35:43):
In fact, it'll be able to deliver payloads of that
size into orbits beyond the Moon. Now between Block one
and Block two, NASA also plans a version of the
SLS called Block one B. It'll have a little bit
more oomph. The central core will have more fuel, it'll
be a bigger fuel tank, and it will be able

(36:06):
to put not just the Orion spacecraft into orbit, but
an orbiting habitat up into space. It can lift a
heavier payload up into space, creating opportunities for missions and
more ambitious goals. Block two's goal is to create a
launch vehicle capable of putting forty five tons of payload
into deep space and will be used for missions that

(36:27):
aim to go to Mars. All right, so let's get
back to this timeline that has since been disputed by NASA.
So according to that original timeline, or at least the
manifest timeline, NASA planned for the first crude Orion mission.
The first mission to have astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft,
which would be called the Artemis two mission, would launch

(36:50):
in January twenty twenty three. The mission will use a
Block one SLS as the launch vehicle, and it would
see the astronauts go on a path round the Moon
and back to Earth, not landing on the Moon, but
doing an orbit of the Moon and then returning or
maybe not even a full orbit. I think it's just
a flyby behind the Moon, similar to some of the

(37:11):
earlier Apollo missions. In August twenty twenty four, NASA plans
to launch the Artemis three mission. This mission's purpose is
to send a lunar lander to the Moon on a
Block one BSLS. More on the whole lunar lander thing
in a bit, because that part of the plan has
definitely changed a couple of times. October twenty twenty four

(37:34):
is the big one. That would be a mission called
Artemis four, and the purpose would be to send astronauts
to actually set foot on the Moon, including at least
one woman. This mission would use a Block one SLS
to send the Orion to rendezvous with a thing around
the Moon's orbit. We'll get back to that because it

(37:56):
has changed. It originally was just going to be a
lunar lander. Now it's slightly different. And this does not
end the Artemis program, right The landing on the Moon
is not the ultimate end of Artemis. NASA plans a
few other missions. One would happen in September twenty twenty five.
This one is not technically an Artemis mission, but it

(38:19):
will use the same spacecraft. It'll use the SLS Block
one in order to launch a satellite called the Europa Clipper,
and this one would fly over to Jupiter and get
an orbit around Jupiter and do flybys of Jupiter's moon
Europa to get a closer look. And part of the
purpose of this mission is to see if Europa has

(38:41):
environments that could potentially support life, So that's really exciting.
Then in June twenty twenty six, NASA plans to send
another mission to the Moon. This one designated Artemis five,
with more astronauts visiting Old Luna, using a Block one
B SLS to get there. So this is the lightly
larger version of the SLS. The following June, NASA would

(39:04):
launch a lander to head to Europa, giving us an
even closer look at Jubiter's Moon because we'd have a
lander setting foot, a lander uncrewed lander setting foot or
landing on Europa. But that would be super cool. In
August twenty twenty eight, NASA, according to this manifest, would
plan to launch the Artemis six mission, which would once

(39:26):
again take astronauts to the Moon, but this time aboard
a Block one B SLS, and in February twenty twenty nine,
Artemis seven would send cargo to the Moon and would
be the first mission to rely on a Block two SLS.
August twenty twenty nine also brings us to Artemis eight,
and that is also using a block to SLS to

(39:48):
send people astronauts aboard and orion mission. I have no
idea where that one's specifically going. It might be a
mission to test the Block two for a manned spaceflight
mission in general, but maybe it's going to the Moon.
I don't know the manifest was unclear, and the final
two Artemist missions that were in that manifest included a

(40:09):
twenty thirty one called Artomis nine that would be a
cargo mission using an SLS block two and an Artemis
ten that would also use a astronaut led mission on
a block to SLS. So that's what the manifest had
laid out, which NASA again has disputed, saying that there
are numerous errors or discrepancies with their current plan. But

(40:31):
that's the most information I have as of the recording
of this podcast. It gives us a general idea of
what they were thinking. When we come back, I'll talk
about some other things that have complicated this, But first
let's take a quick break. As I record this, we're

(40:52):
in a blackout on information about further details of the
Artimist program, largely because NASA is in contract negotiations with
multiple companies for different parts of this program. So there's
a lot of details that haven't been nailed down. There's
nothing to share because they haven't decided which version they're
going with on some of these things. Meanwhile, the clock

(41:13):
is ticking, but while we don't have concrete facts to
talk about, we can at least go over what NASA
has in mind. Now, I've mentioned the Orion spacecraft several
times without really going into any real detail about it. Again,
out of all the pieces for the Artemis program, this
one has had the most consistent support behind it. Since
two thousand and five, the first Orion spacecraft has been

(41:33):
completed in manufacturing. So it's something that we can actually
talk about because there is one. It hasn't been used yet,
but it exists. It has changed a few times since
its original concept. The prime company responsible for building the
Orion spacecraft is Lockheed. Now lots of folks call Orion
a gum drop shaped spacecraft, and to me, it looks

(41:55):
really similar in design of the old Apollo capsules, but
it's larger and fancier than this old spacecraft. It could
carry more people. The Apollo spacecraft would carry a crew
of three. The Orion is designed to carry a crew
of four. A lot of the documentation says they could
carry a crew of up to six, but NASA consistently

(42:16):
describes it as being a four person spacecraft. It is
capable of traveling in space for twenty one days, or
it can exist out in space for up to six
months when docked with some other spacecraft like the International
Space Station. NASA's plan is to crew the Orion spacecraft

(42:37):
with four astronauts, though as I said before, it could
potentially hold as many a six, at least according to
most documentation I've read. The crew module, which is the
bit that the astronauts will actually be in, is the
part that looks like an old Apollo capsule, but bigger.
It has three hundred and sixteen cubic feet of habitable volume.
The old Apollo spacecraft had numerous die switches, buttons and

(43:01):
screens all over the place, but the Orion has just
three computer screens, and it distills all of those various
technologies that were represented by those buttons and dials and
switches into a computer controlled system accessible through on screen commands,
which in itself is a pretty big departure and a
big bet. It's one of those things that makes some

(43:21):
people nervous, the idea that you have these computerized systems,
and you question, well, what happens if something goes wrong?
How do you take manual control of the spacecraft. I've
already talked about the SLS, but there's a third part
of that that we need to mention really quickly, which
is what NASA calls the Exploration Ground Systems or EGS.

(43:43):
I would call that a launch pad. The SLS will
use new ones constructed for that purpose, and the project
will also make use of two new spacesuit designs. But
rather than go into detail about those spacesuits, I'm going
to save that for its own podcast to talk about
the evolution of the space suit and how that has
changed over the past few decades. To actually visit the Moon,

(44:07):
NASA does have some other plans, and one of those
now is the Lunar Gateway. Before I was talking about
a lunar lander that the Orion would have presumably rendezvous
with around orbit in the Moon and then gone down
to the surface. But things have changed since then. So
here's how it's supposed to work. You have what is

(44:28):
essentially a lunar satellite or lunar space station. This not
as big as the International Space Station, but a station
in orbit around the Moon itself, and NASA would launch
this in parts in several launches, and then construct it
in space around lunar orbit, and when finished, it should

(44:50):
be the size of a studio apartment. According to NASA,
capable of supporting astronauts for several months at a time
if necessary. Orion would be docking with this gateway satellite
or gateway station in order to go to Moon missions,
and astronauts would not stay aboard the Lunar Gateway all

(45:12):
year round. Instead, they would just be there for the
duration of a mission before departing in the Orion capsule
to come back home, and you would have to occasionally
or frequently send cargo up to replenish the Lunar Gateway.
From the gateway, astronauts would board a spacecraft that would

(45:33):
be a type of transfer module, so they would dock
their Orion capsule with the Lunar Gateway, transfer over into
the Lunar Gateway, get stuff ready for their Moon adventures.
Then they would go over into this transfer module and
that would detach from the Lunar Gateway. It would make
its way to the descent point for the Moon's surface.

(45:58):
It would then separate so that you would have a
descent stage, a descent module that would go down and
land on the surface of the Moon. Astronauts would then
do their thing on the lunar surface, using the descent
stage as sort of a base of operations for up
to two weeks. Then they would board the part of
that module that would be the ascent module. So this

(46:20):
is the part that actually launches back off of the
Moon's surface, leaving part of it behind, right, So everyone
piles into the Ascent Module, they launch, and then that
puts them into a trajectory where they can rendezvous with
the Lunar Gateway, dock with it, and come back to
that studio apartment floating around the surface of the Moon.

(46:43):
They could then continue work in the Lunar Gateway, or
they could transfer over to the Orion spacecraft for the
journey home. Now that part of the plan is largely
being left to commercial space programs, so this is really
not a description of a specific piece of technology. It's
more of a description of what NASA wants in order

(47:04):
for them to be able to have these missions work.
So it's more like, this is what the technology needs
to be able to do, but we're leaving it up
to various companies to present proposals on how they want
to do that. So while there's some concept art, it's
all just a placeholder. These companies could each come up
with very different proposals on how to achieve the same goal,

(47:27):
and then ultimately NASA will select whichever one the agency
feels as the most the perfect one for their mission.
Hard to say the best, because things like not just
the technological capability, but also the price factor into this
sort of stuff. Anyway, honestly, that's pretty much where Artemis
shakes out today. It's a lot of placeholders. Even to

(47:49):
this day that still blows my mind considering that the
goal is to get boots on the Moon by twenty
twenty four. But then we've moved pretty quickly in the
past in the space race, and honestly, this might be
exactly what we need to drive innovation. We'll be right
back with more about the Artemis program after these short messages.

(48:18):
So there are generally two paths you can take when
you're making these sort of big, big programs. One is
you can work on the technology that you're gonna need
for space exploration, and then you can set a timeline
based on your progress as you produce these pieces of technology.
But that opens up the chance for projects to fall
into an observation called Parkinson's law that's named after Cyril

(48:42):
Northcote Parkinson, a British author and Parkinson observed that work
tends to expand to fill the time available for it
to be completed. So, for example, let's say I'm researching
a podcast, and initially I have a deadline of four
hours to finish my research before I have to go
into the studio, and that means it's going to take

(49:02):
me four hours to complete that research. I've got it
all planned out, I'm ready to go. I'm hitting the
ground running. I'll be done in four hours. But let's
say that something happens. Let's say that there's another podcast
in the studio where I was supposed to go in
they're running late. Then I'm told, hey, it's actually going
to be two hours later than what you thought. Now
you have six hours to finish that research. Well, according

(49:25):
to Parkinson's law, the work of that research will actually
expand for that six hours. That does not necessarily mean
that the podcast I record is going to be longer
than it would have been if it had stated its
original studio time, or that'll even be better than it
would have been when I was supposed to go in,
rather than just the work itself expanded to fill in

(49:48):
those extra two hours. So let's say we're working on
a project, and we're not sure how long it's going
to take us to complete this project, but we're supposed
to give an estimate. So if we're conserv then we'll
give an estimate that's further out than what we think
we actually need. And the idea being well, things are
gonna pop up, we're gonna have to deal with them,

(50:10):
so let's plan for it to take twenty days, but
we think it's really gonna only take ten. Well, according
to Parkinson's law, the work we're doing is actually going
to expand to fill up those extra ten days. So
at the end we're going to say, boy, aren't we
glad we said twenty days because it turned out that's
how long we needed. But there's also the possibility that

(50:30):
you could have completed it in ten days, and that
you really just allowed the work to expand to fill
that space, that if you had given a ten day deadline,
you still have gotten the work done. There is a
diminishing return here, though. There is a point where you
might give a deadline that's just too aggressive, right that
maybe you say, oh, it's going to take us five days,
when you really think it's going to take you ten,

(50:52):
and you're doing it so that you motivate yourself, but
it turns out you've sabotaged the whole project because there's
just no way to get it all done in five days.
That can also happen. So it's a delicate line you
have to walk right. So Parkinson's law is really more
about how we let time get away from us, or
how we allow bureaucracy to play a large role in things,
or otherwise bog ourselves down in the stuff that keeps

(51:14):
us from getting the core work done. However, it does
not mean we can set these arbitrarily short deadlines and
then magically get things done faster. As I said, there
is that tipping point that you have to look at.
NASA's approach is to set aggressive but potentially achievable deadlines
that in turn sets expectations and the pace of work.

(51:36):
It also gets people into the habit of looking at
practical approaches. If the goal is to get people back
on the Moon by twenty twenty four, what are the
things that have to happen in order to achieve that goal.
If we're going to send people to Mars in the
following decade in twenty thirties, what do we absolutely have
to have nailed down to make that happen, rather than

(52:00):
just having feature creep come in where we say, oh,
wouldn't it be nice if we also added this. By
saying these aggressive goals, you kind of push feature creep
to the side because you say, listen, our main concern
is getting this to happen by this date. The things
that would be nice are out of the discussion because

(52:20):
that doesn't contribute to what we actually have as our goal.
So that's kind of what happened in the nineteen sixties
to a large extent, and it does work as a
motivating factor to a certain level. Now. Besides, these timelines
have to be aggressive anyway, because NASA can't count on

(52:42):
having a budget sufficient for achieving its goals from one
year to the next, definitely not between presidential administrations, and
there's the potential for the presidential administration to make a
big change in twenty twenty, So who knows what the
next president might prioritize when it comes to budgets. So

(53:03):
if they set longer timelines, if NASA said, Okay, we're
gonna give ourselves more space, no pun intended, to get
this stuff done, there'd be a lot more chances for
things like budget cutbacks which would sabotage emission just as
effectively as hitting some sort of technical or design challenge
that would become harder to solve than you thought. NASA

(53:25):
is moving forward with their goals that we're gonna have
to wait and see if they actually are achievable. But
in the meantime, the agency has opened up the application
process for people who are interested in becoming astronauts. Right now,
the US Astronaut program has about forty eight people in it.
NASA needs more for this program to be workable, so
it's possible someone listening to this podcast could be the

(53:48):
first woman or the next man to set foot on
the moon. To apply, you have to meet some pretty
high standards, which again is understandable. There are three general
types of folks that NASA's looking for during this application process.
They're looking for people who hold at least a master's
degree in a STEM related field, so like engineering or

(54:09):
astrophysics or something like that. They are also looking for
people who are medical doctors. It gets more specific than that,
but that's one of the three types, and the third
are people who are certified test pilots. Those are the
three types that NASA's looking for. So if you belong
to one of those three groups, you can look into
the requirements that NASA has in place to see if

(54:31):
you meet all the criteria. The application process includes an
online component for the very first time, which, as I understand,
it takes a couple of hours to complete. I wouldn't
know because I don't meet the initial criteria, but maybe
one of you guys can find out, and we'll have
to wait and see if Artemis actually gets people to
the Moon. We just don't know if it's going to

(54:51):
be possible, yet I have high hopes. I would love
to see it happen. I don't know how useful it
will be in the long term unless we're actually able
to to use the stuff we learn on the Moon
as a platform for learning how we can get to Mars.
But it's definitely something that is inspirational and that alone

(55:11):
has value. You just have to weigh that value against
other considerations, like risk and the other goals that you
have with the agency, because NASA is doing obviously a
lot more than just these programs, and you don't want
to have a big, high risk, high payoff project fail

(55:32):
like the Constellation project did, and potentially set the agency backward.
So it's a complicated thing, but we'll have to keep
our eyes open. I'm sure I'll do an update on
this in the future, once we know more about what
the Artemis program is going to be moving forward, and
whether those deadlines stay in place or if they shift around.
And in the meantime, if you guys have any suggestions

(55:53):
for future topics, whether they're space related or a tech
company or some trend in technology you want to know
more about out send me a message. You can contact
me on social media at Facebook or Twitter. We are
tech Stuff hsw at both and I'll talk to you
again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For

(56:19):
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