cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11139477
Archive link: https://archive.ph/wH3Sx
NASA is canceling plans to deploy a space station in lunar orbit and will instead use its components to construct a $20 billion base on the moon’s surface over the next seven years, its new chief Jared Isaacman said on Tuesday.
Isaacman, who was sworn in at the agency in December, made the announcement at the opening of a day-long event at NASA’s Washington headquarters at which he outlined a raft of changes he is making to the agency’s flagship moon program Artemis.
“It should not really surprise anyone that we are pausing Gateway in its current form and focusing on infrastructure that supports sustained operations on the lunar surface,” Isaacman told delegates at the event.
The Lunar Gateway station, largely already built with contractors Northrop Grumman and Vantor, formerly Maxar, was meant to be a space station parked in a lunar orbit. Repurposing the craft for a lunar surface base is not simple.
“Despite some of the very real hardware and schedule challenges, we can repurpose equipment and international partner commitments to support surface and other program objectives,” Isaacman said.
Lunar Gateway was designed to serve as both a research platform and a transfer station that astronauts would use to board the moon landers before descending to the lunar surface.
The changes imposed by Isaacman on the flagship U.S. moon program in recent weeks are reshaping billions of dollars worth of contracts under the Artemis effort.
That is sending companies scrambling to accommodate the extra urgency as China makes progress toward its own 2030 moon landing.
A technical point: the whole idea of the lunar gateway is to have infrastructure in lunar orbit so that it’s ~100x easier and cheaper to send stuff down to the moon’s surface. Therefore allowing the construction, feasibly, of, I don’t know, a lunar base for example.
Why are they bothering to lie about this when they could just shitcan the whole thing?
Gotta line the pockets of the shareholders of SpaceX and whatever Bezo’s space company is called.
Let’s see,
construct a $20 billion base on the moon’s surface over the next seven years,
Vs
No, you won’t.
Taking wagers.
There will be a moon base within the next decade. But it’s not going to be American.
Maybe if the US starts being really nice to China, they’ll let us visit.
Maybe if the US starts being really nice to China, they’ll let us visit.
China probably would let them visit, but it would be very funny if they do to the US what the US did to them and exclude them from international space development. Everyone else can visit, just no yankees.
What is it with Nazi states and moonbases? There’s also an Israeli Unit-8200 linked startup that wants to use railguns to fire supplies up onto the moon to colonise it.
they could, you know, do real science by funding the $11 billion mission they just cancelled to collect the mars soil samples we’ve been bagging for years, but no we need a base that will dramatically increase NASA’s operating costs with little gain compared to robots
Oh yeah of course I’m sure you’re building a fucking moon base. Then you’re gonna cure cancer, locate Bigfoot, and make a faster-than-light space ship, and you’re gonna make everyone immortal, and figure out how to produce infinite food for free. Fuck it, when you’re just saying shit, it turns out you can do anything.
The next NASA director to come will “cancel” the project and announce a new, even grander one. Rinse and repeat.
Cool.
They’re doing it because of China but I’m not going to complain. Maybe they realise China is definitely going to succeed in their plans and they need to put their own plan on the table or else they might get shut out of ever being able to do it if China says the land is theirs in the future.
yeah but China is for real
I came here to say the exact same thing. This is 100% because China is on its way to the Moon.
I love how all these sorts of articles orbit around the idea of China’s moon missions without ever addressing them directly, because if they did, they’d need to admit that China is ahead of the US and the US is setting very unrealistic timeframes to complete their goals.
$20 billion aka 10 days of war with Iran
Hahaha there is no way they’re going to get that done
It’s definitely a grift. A few years ago it would have been exciting to hear the news of the plans, but now I find it irritating, knowing it’s just financial crimes
If by “a few years ago” you mean 1975. NASA has been making promises that it can’t keep for about half a century now.
Because the funding keeps getting yanked.
And because the MIC refuses to let that impact their bottom line
I just keep thinking about the movie with that Nazi moonbase that I never watched
Iron Sky?
i enjoyed it but that was pre-2016
Yeah that was it lol
Wow, throwback. Watch it, it’s hilarious. Fins have great humor.
This is a hail Mary to try and claim the moon is US property isn’t it?
USA already officially announced their intention to violate the 1967 Outer Space Treaty some years back, but nobody gave a shit since it was iirc either during or shortly after the period when USA did not even had ability to launch crewed orbital flights and had to borrow Soyuz ships for everything.
NASA’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has issued a press release stating that the proposed lunar base will be staffed by two primary divisions: Moon Unit Alpha, and Moon Unit Zappa
OH COME ON
She should sue
$20B contract to Space-X, they ask for 3x more because that’s how projects are, nothing gets built, we forget about it
You want a failed moon base for $20 billion? El*n will do it for 10
Hyperloop on the moon, comin’ right up!
He did actually propose that
Fuck that. I’ll fuck it up for 3
Helfcar plz
I forget what the estimate on paying for universal Healthcare was, but I think I saw 200 billion from Biden’s speeches.
This is so much more resource intensive, magnitudes more demanding of logistics, and has infinitely greater points of failure that would lead to disaster and we’re doing that for 20 billion?
Incredible, emphasis on the in- prefix.
Not disagreeing about cost, but healthcare for 350M people is a larger effort than a moon base imo. Lotta logistics and manual labor.
Without all the intermediates and insurance overheat those 200B at year would be more like 20B
Such graft should also be expected in an endeavor as expansive as this - the MIC and 5 different private space flight companies that dominate the industry in America right now, for example. If they’re accounting for that in their healthcare cost estimations, then they should do the same here.
