Explained: From Artemis to Apollo, why America is investing heavily in private space

For better or worse, America is stuck in a new model of public-private partnership.

Washington:

A private company based in Houston plans this week to lead a mission to the moon that, if successful, would mark the first U.S. moon landing since the end of the Apollo era five years ago. Intuitive Machines’ reputation is at stake when its Nova-C spacecraft launches aboard a SpaceX rocket on Wednesday, following recent landings in China, India and Japan.

So why would such a task be delegated to the commercial sector, especially after another company with similar goals, Astrobotic, failed just last month?

The answer lies in the way NASA has fundamentally restructured itself for Artemis, the agency’s flagship moon-to-Mars program.

During the Cold War, the space agency received blank checks and administered the last bolts of industrial contracts—but the new paradigm bet on America’s strong market economy being able to achieve breakthroughs at a fraction of historical costs.

While the current approach has yielded some results, it also carries the risk that the United States will fall behind its main space rival China in achieving major milestones, namely the next manned mission to the moon and bringing back the first rocks from Mars. .

SpaceX’s success

NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program’s focus on emerging companies is modeled on the meteoric rise of SpaceX, which was derided as reckless during its launch phase but is now arguably the agency’s favorite contractor.

Scott Pace, a former member of the National Space Council, told AFP that NASA intends to adopt a policy that prioritizes “more shots” at lower cost.

“The reliability that SpaceX has now is the result of painfully blowing up multiple rockets along the way,” he said.

After the NASA-led space shuttle program ended in 2011, NASA could only rely on Russia’s Soyuz rockets, and SpaceX launches are currently the only way for astronauts to launch from the United States.

Elon Musk’s company beat favored aerospace giant Boeing to be the first to certify its system, demonstrating to experts the value of competition between companies offering different options.

According to a study in the journal Nature, each space shuttle launch costs more than $2 billion (adjusted for inflation), while the average cost for NASA to purchase seats on a SpaceX flight is estimated to be about $55 million, according to government audits.

Travel to Artemis

During the Apollo era, NASA received more than $300 billion in funding, far exceeding the $93 billion it will spend on Artemis through 2025, according to an analysis by Casey Dreier of the nonprofit Planetary Society.

Rather than directly telling private companies what to build, the agency now purchases services from companies — though this piecemeal approach sometimes has drawbacks.

While NASA has its giant Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion crew capsule, it has contracted SpaceX for an unconventional and as-yet-unproven landing system based on the company’s next-generation Starship rocket to carry people for the first time Moon landing.

Starship has yet to complete flight testing without exploding, and will need multiple ultracold refuelings in orbit before it can travel to the moon independently of SLS to dock with Orion and carry astronauts.

Future space fuel depots could be a great way to facilitate long-range missions to Mars — SpaceX’s founding ideal that Musk pursues with messianic fervor — but if done right, they’re likely to delay America’s return to the moon.

NASA says this could happen as early as 2026, but that timeline could be delayed. China, meanwhile, has set a 2030 deadline for its own manned landings and has recently made good on its promise.

G. Scott Hubbard, a former senior NASA official, told AFP that the Chinese “are not going to go through all the shenanigans that the United States goes through, which is extreme polarization and then the government Shut down threats, followed by ongoing solutions.”

For better or worse, America is stuck in a new model of public-private partnership.

Dreyer said the Artemis design was intended to work with a range of international partners including Europe, Canada, Japan and the United Arab Emirates to prevent it from being scrapped.

Additionally, a previous Moon-to-Mars mission called Constellation was conceived in the 2000s and managed more like the Apollo program, but was canceled due to budget constraints, leaving few realistic options.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)