KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. – After yet another government oversight investigation revealing how costly and behind-schedule NASA’s multi-billion-dollar moon-bound baby really is, the ongoing question resurfaces: can the Artemis mega-rocket survive, especially in the face of competition that arguably outshines the U.S. government’s deep space rocket?
The long-delayed first Artemis moon mission finally launched from the Spacecoast in 2022 after a decade in the making.
Space X’s Starship, the largest and most-powerful rocket ever and by far, largely funded by billionaire owner Elon Musk, has been in development for around the same amount of time.
Starship completed its fifth test flight on October 13th in Texas with a eye-catching ending: the mega-moon-bound (and someday Mars-bound, perhaps) rocket ship proved it could what the Artemis rocket cannot – it landed itself.
The Starship test flight was fantastic, flawless and futuristic.
[EXCLUSIVE: Become a News 6 Insider (it’s FREE) | PINIT! Share your photos]
The second (upper) stage of the rocket booster aced a practice landing into a designated spot in the Indian Ocean, working towards an eventual precise landing on Earth.
The first (lower) stage, the mind-bogglingly-big rocket booster, did something that even most smaller rockets don’t do - it landed itself from exactly where it lifted off in Boca Chica.
Almost all of the colossal Starship spacecraft, from top to bottom, will be reusable. Translation: cheaper and faster launches.
CBS News Space Analyst Bill Harwood said despite Starship’s stunning success, it is not human-rated and is a long way from it.
“They had a really dramatic successful test flight recently where they brought that Super Heavy booster back and they got the Starship upper stage to where they wanted it to go in the Indian Ocean, great success for them,” Harwood said. “But before that thing can ever be considered operational, will NASA be willing to put astronauts on board for a high profile flight to the moon, for example? That is years away. And I say that even knowing that SpaceX very fast, iterates and improves their designs, launches those improvements, and perfects the system. I have no doubt SpaceX will get the Starship Super Heavy flying at some point on an operational basis. But they’re going to have to launch dozens, if not scores of those flights, before they could develop the statistical reliability that NASA’s going to require to put astronauts on board.”
By contrast, almost all of NASA’s Artemis moon rocket, also known as the Space Launch System, or SLS, is not reusable. Only the Orion capsule comes back to Earth.
And it is not cheap, projected to cost taxpayers $4 billion dollars per launch. And that’s just the rocket.
Harwood agreed the Artemis moon rocket, the SLS, is unsustainable in the long-term but said Starship will not be ready to replace the SLS in the short-term.
“We don’t know what kind of crew accommodations there are,” Harwood said. “We don’t know what sort of abort scenarios the Starship will have if they have a major engine failures or malfunctions. You know, and when you think about the SLS, they’re flying proven technology, Space Shuttle main engines and boosters. They have a rocket on top to get them away from a malfunction. What is a Starship going to have to do the same thing. We simply don’t know. So it’s very hard to form an assessment of what NASA will consider a safe vehicle down the road. It’s hard to form an assessment at this point.”
NASA has contracted with SpaceX for Starship to ferry astronauts from the SLS in lunar orbit down to the surface of the moon during the Artemis III mission. Harwood believes Congress will stick with the SLS at least through Artemis III.
“I don’t think Congress will sustain the SLS in the long term unless they can dramatically cut costs,” Hardwood said. “They’re working to do that. But can they get it competitive with what the Starship will probably be down the road? I doubt it. I think the next several flights in the Artemis program will stay with the SLS. I don’t think there’s any alternative to that.”
Get today’s headlines in minutes with Your Florida Daily: