Artemis Moon Program
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View: https://twitter.com/NASAAdmin/status/2062665288814829633
NASA's Artemis III Announcement
Scheduled for Tue Jun 9, 2026 11am ET
Meet the astronauts of Artemis III!
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fLROeRhqZM
NASA's Artemis III Announcement
Scheduled for Tue Jun 9, 2026 11am ET
Meet the astronauts of Artemis III!
It looks like NASA is considering a contingency Artemis launch plan for Blue Origin, from Philip Sloss:
I wonder if the Block 2 SLS could launch the Blue Moon Mk-1 Moon Lander to the Moon? It would certainly need a new payload fairing to go on top of the EUS.
I wonder if the Block 2 SLS could launch the Blue Moon Mk-1 Moon Lander to the Moon? It would certainly need a new payload fairing to go on top of the EUS.
BlueAbyssal
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As I posted in the SLS thread: yes, but it would not be ready in time for that to make sense (BOLE, intended for Block 2, would not be flying until Artemis 9). NASA does not have the SLSes to both launch Orion and launch a lander, and Congress does not seem inclined to expand SLS production, so the question is moot.
martinbayer
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I could not care less for any renderings/conjectures/projections of how it will look, and I weep for any people who get all hot and bothered by any such simulations. Gen whatever, please keep it not only in your pants but within your bodies until it actually happens, because I depend now on paying for my retirement.
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Space.com - Artemis 3 crew revealed by NASA at Johnson Space Center:
View: https://youtu.be/Nbzt5pBdD54
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NASA Official Announcement Press Release:
NASA Marches Toward Artemis III Mission in 2027, Names Crew Members
Full Text Provided:
NASA Marches Toward Artemis III Mission in 2027, Names Crew Members
Full Text Provided:
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"pad anomaly"? "launch anomaly"? I urge everyone to go back to plain English. There will be no Moon base. Unless they go for a shack partly built into the side of an impact crater. That to help protect from micro-meteorites. There is nothing on the Moon. Aside from water ice, everything will have to be flown in. Regular supply launches will eat the budget away. You can burn through a trillion dollars quite quickly if you have more than four people there. So no, there is no point. Elon Musk would do better to send robots.
You are not wrong but you miss part of what's at stake: nobody is going back on the moon for Sciences (long term). This is an industrial endeavor first, with an underlayer of National interest. NASA is simply showing the way and help set in place minimal infrastructures for an industry to growth there.
Every cent of money invested on the Moon would then be for profit, meaning that cost of sustainment would fall on their customers: us on Earth.
Think Wild Wide West where the US Army pacified* territories before opening the gates for the longest caravan of heterogeneous entrepreneur's wagons ever seen. We are getting closer to experience the same. So, don't step too far away from your (moon) boots.
I direct you to :
*obviously an ill-chosen word, sorry in advance
Every cent of money invested on the Moon would then be for profit, meaning that cost of sustainment would fall on their customers: us on Earth.
Think Wild Wide West where the US Army pacified* territories before opening the gates for the longest caravan of heterogeneous entrepreneur's wagons ever seen. We are getting closer to experience the same. So, don't step too far away from your (moon) boots.
I direct you to :
*obviously an ill-chosen word, sorry in advance
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There will be no Lunar Starship Lander just a mega-Agena Starship. Jared is intimating that SLS has no place.
There may be a push to have Orion atop some breed of Falcon, to dock with another SpaceX product “Agena on steroids.”
But SLS and the Delta IV second stage (ICPS) haven’t blown out engines at altitude the way Starship has.
Remember, SLS/ICPS gave Orion 99% or so of the umph needed to go circumlunar…with Orion’s crew in full command of everything. Three cans of hairspray might have been enough to break orbit, as it were.
But if you launch Orion into LEO and Megagena conks out at the wrong time…
There may be a push to have Orion atop some breed of Falcon, to dock with another SpaceX product “Agena on steroids.”
But SLS and the Delta IV second stage (ICPS) haven’t blown out engines at altitude the way Starship has.
Remember, SLS/ICPS gave Orion 99% or so of the umph needed to go circumlunar…with Orion’s crew in full command of everything. Three cans of hairspray might have been enough to break orbit, as it were.
But if you launch Orion into LEO and Megagena conks out at the wrong time…
That is plain English for engineers.
As for moon base, no different than Antarctica bases but with aluminum.
Need to do some reading on spaceflight history. It seems you don't understand. Agena was a hypergolic stage, something Starship wil never be. There will be a Starship lander, Agena wasn't a lander.
RL10's have in their past, (ICPS engines), so your point is meaningless. Unless you are getting on the ULA bandwagon for Vulcan.
Orion was not in command of anything. SLS and ICPS avionics were.
Doesn't matter, Orion can't do LLO if it has to do LOI.
Meaningless point, SLS or Orion could conk out too
Yes, Agenda was hypergolic, but the eyes out push remains...thus Agena-like
Here, Starship replaces Altair, but doesn't initially land. A non-landing Starship won't be as mass-heavy and may not require as many re-fills.
My point about Orion being most safely atop SLS is that--if there is any problem with SLS or the D-IV upper stage....it isn't committed to a circumlunar flight.
If the goal is just "kill SLS" and Orion has to rely on Megagena just to get out of LEO....and THEN things go wrong....you don't have the same safety margin available.
The Orion crew would be in even more control of their own destiny with the EUS Jared is killing
Megagena pushes Blue Moon moonward, and no crew is out at hazard at all, at least until time to trust the actual landing. NG 9x4 or FH could handle the heavy Alpaca, which would no longer have to shave every ounce off.
Here, Starship replaces Altair, but doesn't initially land. A non-landing Starship won't be as mass-heavy and may not require as many re-fills.
My point about Orion being most safely atop SLS is that--if there is any problem with SLS or the D-IV upper stage....it isn't committed to a circumlunar flight.
If the goal is just "kill SLS" and Orion has to rely on Megagena just to get out of LEO....and THEN things go wrong....you don't have the same safety margin available.
The Orion crew would be in even more control of their own destiny with the EUS Jared is killing
Megagena pushes Blue Moon moonward, and no crew is out at hazard at all, at least until time to trust the actual landing. NG 9x4 or FH could handle the heavy Alpaca, which would no longer have to shave every ounce off.
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Which, barring a big technological breakthrough, will not be profitable.
BlueAbyssal
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What makes you so certain?
Well if we succeed in creating operational controlled fusion-reactors there's apparently a lot of Helium-3 in the Moon's regolith courtesy of solar-wind.
BlueAbyssal
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Shift your thinking a bit: what is the ultimate source of all created value? It isn't raw materials, it's brains. Some of the richest (per capita) polities in the world have very little in the way of natural raw materials, but brilliant people. As you assume a big technical breakthrough is needed, what does that look like? Are you assuming something like an SSTO? Controlled fusion? I think it's more likely that a financial breakthrough is what's necessary (which can be but is not necessarily driven by inventing new technology--sometimes it's using existing technology in new ways), as decreased transport costs heavily impact what we can afford to do anywhere. What can potentially be done on the Moon for a profit, not limiting ourselves solely to what we can extract from it, includes:
- Mining (helium-3, oxygen, titanium, water ice, iron)
- Tourism/retirement communities
- Research (low-gravity biomedicine, for example)
- Manufacturing (for example, very large structures can be built on the Moon, and either launched or shot into orbit)
Dr. Phil Metzger has a great paper about the cost of using lunar resources for rocket propellant as just one test case, and his conclusion was that using lunar materials for propellant could ultimately be competitive with launching it from Earth; starting at the Moon, and as we get better, also in GTO and LEO: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.09011
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Establishing a moon colony that can do all that wlll cost piles of money and decades, if ever, for it to start operating profitably. I do not see private enterprise having the patience to fund that, so government(s) will have to step in ...
I can see the business case for communication satellites and GPS, I am doubtful about data centres in space.
I would rather not spend my retirement on the Moon, I would prefer moving about in a wheelchair on Earth.
... and constraints come in.
I can see the business case for communication satellites and GPS, I am doubtful about data centres in space.
I would rather not spend my retirement on the Moon, I would prefer moving about in a wheelchair on Earth.
martinbayer
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My recommendation would be to focus on your strategic objectives (if you have any at all at this point) rather than any tactical merely "look at me" ones, i.e. exactly what do you want to achieve rather than how you want to achieve it. Past theoretical solutions may well have been surpassed by newer ones - engineering evolution marches on. Hypergolic vs. cryo propellant is strictly an engineering decision, not a program level one - but then again, been there, done that, and (re)tired of it...
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BlueAbyssal
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Both Musk and Bezos have long-term horizons and are willing to take short-term losses if it means greater gains down the line. Musk has spoken at length about industrializing the Moon. It’s easy to claim it will cost piles of money, but you’d be better served to calculate it instead of just assuming. Or go look it up, or read the paper I linked to.
Governments have constraints too. Data centers are already very profitable on Earth—you use them daily without realizing it. Every time you make an online purchase, post to social media, look at the weather; if you store photos online, and much more, a data center made that happen for you. That said, progress means taking risks and trying something that might not work, but if it does, will bring large rewards. You may not want to retire on the Moon, but for the right price and in a congenial environment, don’t assume nobody else would.
So your priority is science. That’s fine. Just recall that science has never been a reason for the government to outlay huge sums of money, while military and economic reasons are. That said, it’s an artifact of World War II that so much research is funded by the state, and both wealthy individuals and the private sector still fund plenty. There’s no strong reason that science has to be so much under the thumb of politicians.
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That is beside the point. I argue that building a Moon base, if it comes about, will be mostly - completely? - government funded. Because taking short-term losses will not be enough, I believe it will take decades of funding without profit to establish such a base.
Not because I personally want it that way, but I believe that is what is at the heart of private versus public funding.
BlueAbyssal
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That is key to the point. My reading of your underlying values is that you see space science as the province of the state, and because you don’t value industry so much and don’t see avenues for profit aside from what exists, therefore a lunar base must be state-funded. Is that accurate? Think about how long Amazon did not turn a profit, yet continually expanded. Think about SpaceX’s long-term goals, and how with the IPO, Starlink, Google, Anthropic, Falcon 9, Starshield, and other big deals (they’ve signed billions in contracts just this year), they have a huge war chest that can let them carry losses for a long time. You believe a lot. Have you calculated anything? Skepticism is easy.
But don’t you see? You believe that’s at the heart of it because of the value I described above. You really should read that paper I linked to; it doesn’t seem you’ve even opened it. You may also like to read Mach33’s independent research both on orbital data centers and SpaceX’s profitability.
Also: what big technical leap are you envisioning is necessary?
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That seems to be the status quo.
My personal opinion of industry, or about what should be funded publicly, what should be funded privately does not matter.
What matters is what investors think will offer the best return for their money.
I expect investors will simply walk away if a private company sinks billions into a project for decades. Without profit.
But I have. The paper presupposes lunar facilities in place, then models the resulting economics of operating the facilities. They might cover the initial costs of building them - and more.
I seriously doubt investors will have the patience to reach that point. I repeat, I think it will take decades, not the 'short term' - whatever that is. Stable government would need to own the project of building the facilities the whole way to complete them.
The years may prove me wrong, I expect I will not be around to witness it.
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Cheap access to space:
- space elevator
- EM-rail launcher
- space drive building on a theoretical physics revolution - a man can dream
BlueAbyssal
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Read The Long Space Age, and you’ll find government domination of space science is an aberration rather than the norm. We are starting to see a shift back to science by the people rather than the state already.
If it doesn’t matter, then posting here is a waste of your time. Your beliefs do not emerge from nothingness, they’re underlaid by particular values.
That depends on what time horizon they’re willing to accept, how much things will cost, and how much of it is their own money. We are also seeing a shift towards much longer horizons in investment, especially in aerospace. We have examples already, most prominently in SpaceX, which has had private investors going back over a decade. There’s an implicit assumption here that lunar outposts have to carry all their costs independently, when that clearly won’t be the case.
You believe this, but until you do some math yourself, I have no reason to take you seriously. There are already multiple companies bending hardware to produce lunar propellant, some in cooperation with the state, some on their own. They’ve managed to raise a fair amount of money.
Perhaps not. I have no idea how old you are. I expect I will see large private enterprises beyond Earth in my lifetime, and many people living outside Earth’s biosphere. The government will be there too, of course, but mainly in its proper role, rather than as owner. Isaacman is shifting Artemis in this direction.
Now that you’ve finally answered this:
1. A space elevator would be a hideously expensive capital item, far more than anything currently under development, and I have seen math showing a mature Starship handily outperforms it in price and mass to orbit.
2. Actually doable but it has serious limitations, especially if you hope to launch people. Look up companies like Longshot. Volume and mass limits also sharply constrain what we could send up.
3. Indeed, but we have to live in the real world, which means exercising more creativity.
How something is manufactured, how long it takes, how often it’s built, and by how many people is a huge part of program costs. None of that requires large technical breakthroughs, though they can benefit. That’s why engines like Raptor and BE-4 cost an order of magnitude less than the RS-25.
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Goodness.
BlueAbyssal
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I don’t mean to be rude with that, so it could be better worded. But, “I feel,” or, “I doubt,” isn’t much to go off on. That’s why it’s so useful to have a few numbers to start. For example: what does it cost us to send water and oxygen to orbit (for an example of this, Varda assumes SpaceX will charge them at least $5,500/kg and they price their payload accordingly)? What could we do in space that we cannot presently do if we developed the ability to use raw materials offworld? How does reuse or a mass-driver change the economics? You might find Claude or Grok useful to compare assumptions and run some numbers, if you don’t want to do it manually. Feelings are all well and good, but numbers are more convincing, even napkin math. You don’t have to be an economist to play around with various figures and see what comes up.
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I am counting the years it took to reach milestones in spaceflight, admittedly then guessing at the number of rocket launches needed for sending up materials and construction crew. The time needed to construct first crew living quarters on the Moon, next setting up facility building machinery.
Start the production facilities construction.
Troubleshooting the facilities. All the while sending crew supplies, construction materials and replacement crew Moonward.
I stand by my claim this will take decades. And will cost piles of money.
Start the production facilities construction.
Troubleshooting the facilities. All the while sending crew supplies, construction materials and replacement crew Moonward.
I stand by my claim this will take decades. And will cost piles of money.
Nothing wrong with that.
To Martin,
I want to keep hydrogen rocketry alive...and frankly have no trust in Bezos capability. SLS/EUS is best for outer planet probes. Falcon is best for LEO duties, and the occasional probe. The tech bros are rich enough without NASA Centers being gouged to make them richer.
Keeping in-house engineering experience in case Starship or NG fails is a must. A lunar presence will inspire youth, and is a way to maintain aerospace excellence without wars. That is the real value of the space programs.
BlueAbyssal
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Previous milestones aren’t really a good touchstone for future ones. Technology frequently goes through an S-curve, so milestones will get faster and faster as economics and economies of scale kick in rather than the one-off disjointed nature of government programs.
Also, why are you assuming raw material extraction must be done with humans? Most real-world designs assume it will be completely automated, and they’re doing their engineering accordingly.
That’s great, but you’re still not doing even napkin math. How much is ‘piles’ of money? $1 billion? $10 billion? Is our productivity as low as NASA’s, or can we assume it’s at least as good as Rocket Lab? What cost to the Moon are you assuming?
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As I wrote, I count years.
Eleven years for Project Apollo to put twelve men on the moon, at a cost of $253 billion in 2023 dollars.
A stab in the dark: Moonbase will have burned through trillions of dollars before it becomes operational.
@BlueAbyssal What order of magnitude in spending do you expect will be needed? Ten trillion? A hundred trillion dollars?
Two bucks and a nickel?
Eleven years for Project Apollo to put twelve men on the moon, at a cost of $253 billion in 2023 dollars.
A stab in the dark: Moonbase will have burned through trillions of dollars before it becomes operational.
@BlueAbyssal What order of magnitude in spending do you expect will be needed? Ten trillion? A hundred trillion dollars?
Two bucks and a nickel?
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