If all goes as planned, NASA will launch a rocket tomorrow afternoon.
That is the start of a longer mission to get back to the moon. This
first phase of the Artemus Moon mission will send an unmanned capsule
to lunar orbit and back. But NASA wants humans to land again on the
moon and 2024, or 25 has far grander designs and destinations After
that.
A science correspondent Miles O'Brien tells us it has taken a long
time and a lot of money to get the Artemus mission off the ground.
It was a countdown to yet another delay years late and billions over
budget. NASA's most powerful rocket ever is still on the pad and
Florida after bad weather and a host of technical issues scuttled
the launch attempt Monday, The space launch system will be carrying
an Orion spacecraft on an on crude test flight to orbit the moon.
It's the Artemus one mission. NASA's first foray in its encore campaign
to send humans back to the lunar surface. This time the agency is
promising more than flags and footprints. Why is NASA going back
to the moon?
Because
We do not have the capability of going to Mars. That's former shuttle
payload specialist former Florida senator and current NASA administrator
Bill Nelson. What we're gonna learn living and working on the moon
is going to help us
Nelson at the Kennedy Space Center a month before launch.
Still inside the cavernous vehicle assembly building. The Boeing
built SLS rocket was enveloped in a cocoon of scaffolding so technicians
could work through their clothes out checklists
to your mind when you see this thing all stacked up in here.
The enormity the amount of energy that is contained
In their
sequence start.
It has 15% more thrust than the Saturn five rocket, which launched
12 men to the surface of the moon between 1969 and 1972. The SLS
returns NASA to the Apollo Design Philosophy capsule on top of the
rocket final liftoff of Atlantis, Unlike the space shuttle orbiter
attached downstream and on the side
In harm's way of falling debris, which caused the demise of the Columbia
crew in 2003. This is where the crew would enter Orion SLS Flow manager
Lily Burial took me to the top of the 32 story Rocket and show me
the Lockheed Martin built Orion, with its protective launch cover
in place.
Attached above rockets designed to whisk capsule and crew away from
the stack if something goes terribly wrong.
So has the capability to do a launch aboard. The rocket has taken
office. Something happens and we need the crew to get off of the
vehicle.
And that's a significant safety improvement over shuttle. Absolutely,
but there is still a lot of space shuttle D. N a. In the SLS design.
Its four main engines are modified shuttle leftovers. So too, are
the twin solid rocket boosters and the fuel tank design also has
strong shuttle lineage
does not push technology that was never part of its sales pitch.
It was the opposite. It was
Because we are reusing shuttle parts. We are going to be able to
do this sooner and for less money.
Lori Garver was NASA's deputy administrator from 29 until 2013 in
her newly released book escaping gravity, she says Boeing executives
promised to deliver a moon rocket in five years for $6 billion. That
was 2010. I don't believe these people thought it would be true,
but they knew they could sell that to Congress and who was buying
what Boeing was selling?
None other than Bill Nelson, then chairman of the Senate committee
that oversees NASA.
So when we heard of pieces of the shuttle kind of put together, uh,
that'll be faster. That was actually not true at all. It was a seducing
argument.
Because there were certain technologies that we were comfortable
with. But Lori Garver and others in the Obama administration, we're
not comfortable with the old way of building rockets cost plus contracts,
which guarantee companies healthy profits, even if they are late
and over budget.
Falcon nine. Instead, Garver wanted to double down on fixed price
agreements with the likes of Elon Musk's SpaceX.
But the old space industrial complex exerted its political influence,
and Senator Nelson led the charge to make SLS the law of the land
in 2010. So a lot of people over the years have called this at various
times that Senate launched system or Mr Nelson's Rocket. It really
does have
Your imprint on it Well.
You're very kind miles to want to give me all this credit. But the
fact is that
Uh, we were at a crossroads in this that the program before had been
Just not gonna make it.
Go back to the moon.
The stuff of Aries one ounce testing concepts for the future of new
rocket design. The Bush administration proposed that program called
Constellation in 2004.
Using that milestone. It has taken NASA 18 years to finally be poised
to launch an unmanned rocket and capsule toward the moon. Why is
it taking so long?
It wasn't a repeat of the stack.
Of the space transportation system. In other words, the shuttle the
Orion capsule
to have all kinds of new sophistication.
Not the old Apollo stuff.
So this is a brand new rocket.
And when you design a brand new rocket and build it
It's gonna take time. And it did. Meanwhile, the brand new, much
cheaper rockets keep emerging and launching from SpaceX at a much
faster rate.
Company has its own moon and Mars ambitions with its heavy lift rocket
called Starship. It has slated an orbital test flight in September.
The stainless steel Buck Rogers style vehicle will be fully reusable.
Except for the Orion capsule. NASA's new rocket is a completely expendable
single use system. NASA's inspector general estimates the Artemis
campaign will cost $93 billion between 2012 and 2025 4.1
billion for a single launch.
Elon Musk claims the price tag for a starship launch will be less
than $10 million. This isn't NASA's best foot forward. We are better
than this is SLS proved, If anything, I think SLS will prove that
we shouldn't be doing things in this way anymore. It is already happening.
NASA has contracted with SpaceX to build the landing craft a modified
starship
To take astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the moon on
the third Artemus mission, so you have to wonder.
It's just the beginning of an era at some level, or is it the end
of an era of a way of building?
Uh, rocket ships to space. It's a beginning of a new era of both
commercial and government joining up in a partnership. It will evolve.
Of course, evolution implies a natural selection.
NASA's big gold plated rocket may be aiming for the moon.
But it also may be headed the way of the dinosaurs.
For the PBS news hour. I'm Miles O Brien at the Kennedy Space Center
in Florida.