2024 moon landing deadline is definitely political and aspirational — but that's not all bad

The Trump administration has announced its plan — the Artemis program — returning humans (and sending the first woman) to the surface of the Moon by 2024. From there, NASA intends to pivot to preparation for a human mission to Mars.

At Wednesday’s House hearing on the major development programs supporting the Artemis Program highlighted that a 2024 landing deadline might be more aspirational than actual, but was nonetheless valuable.

Current and former NASA officials noted the value of deadlines as a forcing function, allowing managers to reign in overly enthusiastic engineers trying to perfect every tiny detail and get them around to launching their rocket.

But this kind of deadline is useful in another way. The enormously complexity, difficulty and cost of space programs have specific political consequences. Some politicians may have a personal or parochial interest in space, but for most members of Congress and most occupants of the White House, the payoff times far enough away to make space an uncertain political investment. People are understandably less enthusiastic about supporting something that will not deliver any results until long after its champions have moved on.

Space exploration has enjoyed steady, bipartisan support. Certainly, politicians from both sides of the aisle recognize that space exploration is good for the country. But when it comes to spending political capital, there are light-years of difference between doing something because it is the right thing to do versus doing it for all those very noble reasons and reaping the rewards for doing so.

The current Artemis program may be changing this political calculus for the better. If the Artemis program is successful, it could represent a major shift in the politics of space. Aligning major, headline-making achievements more closely with political cycles means that uncommitted decision-makers will find space a sounder political investment.

And that’s not just for presidents in their second term, either. Senators serve a six-year term; many congressional leadership positions are limited to six years as well. Bringing NASA to a six- to eight-year cadence creates a broad political incentive for all members of Congress and the administration to make space exploration goals happen.

Synchronizing space to a political calendar creates complications. Speeding a program up generally incurs increased risks to cost, performance and safety. But there are at least two mitigating factors at work here.

First, schedule pressure can indeed impact safety — the first example of that is the Apollo 1 fire that killed three astronauts on the launch pad in 1967. NASA and the American space industry are all acutely aware of the risks of outpacing sound judgment. In a world where space exploration is set to achieve major goals on a six- to eight-year political cadence, mishaps mean that political leaders get blamed for the tragic death of astronauts on their watch, rather than celebrating their heroic accomplishments.

The entire political value proposition is underwritten by the centrality of safe success; there is no looming Cold War threat to justify extraordinary risk-taking or failure. In the case of the Artemis, the 2024 goal is sound only so long as NASA feels it can slide the schedule a bit if safety becomes an overriding concern.

Second, a combination of physics, engineering and politics mean that NASA has already made great progress in creating a solid foundation for Artemis. We are not beginning from a cold start. Momentum has been building for 15 years. We will not be paying the kind of premium for speed that we saw with the Apollo program. Instead, we are close to a sustainable program of human deep space exploration that may permit regular, ongoing wins for years and decades to come, especially if we diversify our investments in both established space industry partners and new entrants.

This second point has an important implication. The current orientation toward the moon and Mars started under Bush. Obama administration leadership was critical in maturing the program and introducing key architecture elements. Trump has accelerated the work of the two previous administrations. If we manage to get over the Artemis finish line, this will be a victory with a lot of winners on both sides of the aisle and both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Conversely, if the current push falters and fails because it is undercut by Congress, then assigning blame will be straightforward.

Broadly speaking, two things need to happen if the United States is to shift to a more aggressive tempo of major space exploration accomplishments. First, congressional leadership is vital. NASA already has strong bipartisan support, but congressional appropriators and authorizers can provide the stable funding and legislative foundation necessary for both Congress and the White House to continue investing significant effort in big space projects.

Second, NASA and the space industry must continue to change. Gearing up toward a steady, metronome-like beat producing major wins every six- to eight-years, while being safe and prudent, will be a challenge. By no means an impossible effort, but most certainly a difficult one that will require careful deliberation.

Today, Washington feels more combative and divided than ever. NASA is something of an exception; it enjoys bipartisan interest and support. Congressional leadership now means that bipartisan support can produce bipartisan rewards. And if there is a time when the nation needs some big, shared wins, it is now. So, let’s aim for a 2024 landing, be willing to declare something reasonably close to that a win, and get moving.

Originally published in The Hill (Link)

Ending the Moon versus Mars fight

NASA’s long-term goals include enabling “the extension of human presence throughout the solar system.” This will be an incredibly long, arduous and difficult task requiring countless steps over many generations. But for whatever reason, the U.S. spaceflight community seems bound and determined to start this journey by shooting themselves in the foot with another interminable debate over which essential steps we can ignore and how quickly we can ignore them.

Preserving “continuity of purpose” was a dominant theme in the 2017 NASA Transition Authorization Act. Over the years, changes in direction, restarts and program cancelations have taken their toll on NASA. Planning for human space exploration perfectly captures this strategic uncertainty. We are fortunate to have not just one, but two good, early destinations for human exploration: the moon and Mars.

Barring any unforeseen discoveries, these two destinations are by far the best choices for human exploration in space. The moon has the great advantage of being significantly less distant, while Mars is rather less completely hostile to human life.

A 2003 Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report included a discussion of long-term direction for the U.S. space program. That discussion is the foundation of the now widely accepted consensus position: It is time for human exploration to move beyond low-Earth orbit. Since 2003, three different presidential administrations have sought to put their own, unique stamp on human exploration of deep space.

Under the George W. Bush administration, the plan was to go to the moon and then Mars.

The Obama administration wanted, instead, to send people to Mars by way of the moon. Certainly, NASA under the Obama administration tried very hard to shift the focus of human exploration to Mars, but even then, could not completely bypass the moon. The Asteroid Retrieval Mission (ARM) was proposed as a part of the broader plan for exploration and has become, effectively, a precursor to the Lunar Gateway — a small, permanent lunar orbiting outpost — which features in current exploration plans.

The plan under the Trump administration is something of a synthesis that tries to go to the moon and then pivot to Mars.

The fact that the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations have agreed on anything — that human spaceflight should take people to both the Moon and Mars — represents an astonishing level of consensus in this political climate. At a more pragmatic level, it demonstrates the fact that no viable plan can completely disregard one destination at the expense of the other.

These two destinations are linked, in part due to the unyielding facts of physics, engineering and biology. A larger issue is the political reality. If both destinations are attractive, a moon exploration program is viable from one administration to the next only insofar as it sends people to Mars. Likewise, a Mars exploration program will survive changes at the White House only if it provides for substantial human exploration of the moon.

Clearly, NASA’s budget will not allow for simultaneous moon and Mars programs. These goals must be pursued sequentially. But just because the goals will be achieved sequentially does not mean that all the work leading to them must also be carried out sequentially. A short-term plan to land astronauts on the moon can be made to serve the purposes of a long-term plan to send humans to Mars, and vice versa.

As for those efforts that can’t simultaneously support both moon and Mars efforts, they can at least minimize the cost associated with switching between targets.

Any architecture that cannot count on strong support from both Moon and Mars advocates will find it hard to develop enough institutional and political inertia to resist counterproductive, spurious changes in focus. Any architecture that is predicated on telling either Moon or Mars advocates that their voice is unnecessary, unneeded, and irrelevant is going to be under constant attack from the neglected stakeholder.

To be clear, this is not rehashing the argument that we can dismiss any debate about destination because going to one requires, for reasons of engineering, physics, or logistics, a presence at the other. It will almost always be possible to find a better, cheaper, and more effective solution that focuses narrowly on one objective to the exclusion of the other — at least on paper.

Realistically, it is prudent to assume (at least for planning purposes) that future administrations reserve the right to change the emphasis back and forth between the Moon and Mars. That reality means that the best architecture will produce progress toward both destinations while minimizing the penalty for switching between them.

A particular case in point is the currently proposed Lunar Gateway. A Gateway may not be the best way to get astronauts to the lunar surface, nor is it necessarily the best way to send humans to Mars. However, it is a serviceable option in both architectures. More importantly, it is something useful that NASA can work on and build that will not necessarily have to be cancelled the next time there is a change in destination. A pared-down, direct approach to landing humans on the surface of the Moon will produce far less that will survive a shift in emphasis to Mars. Likewise, an approach that focuses solely on sending humans to Mars will be hard-pressed to deliver progress that can be effectively repurposed if Mars once again falls out of favor as a destination for human exploration.

A program focused on one destination to the exclusion of the other is a responsible choice only insofar as one Congress can tie the hands of a future Congress, or that one administration can make future occupants of the White House bend to its will.

The journey of 100 million miles begins with just one step, and it doesn’t really matter whether we take that first step with the right foot or the left. What matters is that we don’t attempt the journey while hopping on one foot.

Originally published in The Hill (Link)