More on NASA's Artemis Moon Program

It's been 50 years and we still haven't gone back to the moon. NASA has a plan, the Artemis mission, and a goal (set by the Trump administration) of landing there by 2024. But given everything in detailed in this latest update from Ars Technica, that looks unlikely.

During a visit to Johnson Space Center last Friday, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine explained that, unlike the Apollo hardware, Orion and SLS need some help to get a crew to the lunar surface and that this is the role the Lunar Gateway will play. "We can get to low lunar orbit, but there’s not enough delta-V to leave low-lunar orbit," Bridenstine said. "So we can go, but you can’t come home. This is why we need to get more delta-V. Think of a small space station in orbit around the Moon where we can aggregate landing capability by the year 2024."

However, the White House Office of Management and Budget, which is typically loathe to initiate large new space programs, has pushed back against the Gateway. The budgeting office argues that a Gateway is not technically needed to stage a landing mission from lunar orbit. Depending on their designs, some lunar landers could be pre-placed in an orbit for rendezvous even without the Gateway.

"OMB is definitely trying to kill Gateway," a senior spaceflight source told Ars. "OMB looks at what the vice president said about getting to the Moon by 2024 and says you could do it cheaper if you didn’t have Gateway, and probably faster. They are fighting tooth and nail to nix the Gateway."

I do hope the OMB gets its way and forces NASA to amend its plan to use commercial launchers and vehicles and drop the Gateway, which is essential just a sop to the big aerospace companies.