Europa Clipper of NASA suffers under SLS, Moon Landers wins funding and Russia talks about lunar ambitions

Eric Ralph · June 4, 2019

Europa Clipper deserves better sails

• To date, Congress has "mandated" Europa Clipper and a Lander follow-up project on NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rockets. It was a political ploy by longtime supporter John Culberson (former United States representative), who sought the support of congressional guardians focused on the preservation of SLS and Orion-related pork, which feeds their lives. districts or legislative states (Sen. Shelby, Sen Nelson and others).
• Developed by Lockheed Martin with the support of the European Space Agency (ESA), the Orion spacecraft is essentially a modern, overweight and undernourished version of NASA's Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM). Despite its poor capabilities, the spacecraft could theoretically be useful for NASA's crew exploration ambitions.
  • Unfortunately, Orion is almost inextricably linked to NASA's SLS rocket, built (for the most part) by Boeing and Aerojet Rocketdyne. Originally known as Ares V, the relatively small SLS has always been designed to launch extremely large payloads. In theory, even the first SLS 1 block (probably the only variant that will ever fly) would be able to deliver about 25 metric tons to Mars and 6.3 mT directly to Jupiter.
• This performance would also significantly reduce the time required for Europa Clipper to travel from Earth to Jupiter from 6 to 7 years old at around 3 years of age.

• In a hilarious way, although Europa Clipper and SLS have both been in development for years and the latter is legally required to launch the first, NASA again did not verify (with certainty) that SLS Block 1 is actually able to launch EC directly to Jupiter, the only advantage of SLS being the three years of time saved in direct trajectory.
• Worse still, despite the mission delays that pushed Europa Clipper's goal of launching from 2022 to 2023, NASA has not yet ordered new SLS boosters beyond the first two, assigned to the NET 2021 missions and 2022 from Orion.
  • As NASA's NIG notes, according to previous estimates of NASA officials, the agency would need a minimum turnaround time of 52 months (4.3 years) for Boeing and Aerojet Rocketdyne are building new SLS boosters. In other words, NASA should have ordered new boosters in September 2018 (8 months ago) for Europa Clipper to have a chance to launch on SLS in 2023.
• Because of all these absurd and preventable uncertainties, we waste a lot of time and money designing Europa Clipper so that it is essentially independent of the launcher, capable of flying aboard Falcon Heavy, Delta IV Heavy or SLS. At this rate, we do not even know if a third SLS will be ready to launch Europa Clipper in 2024, except for a miraculous performance during its launch debut ("Artemis-1", formerly EM-1).

Sending from the Moon (bureaucracy)

• Earlier this week, NASA announced its first truly moon landing-based contracts, awarding OrbitBeyond, Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines a total of $ 253 million for commercially developed Moon landing gear that could be ready for landings. lunar as early as September 2020, July 2021, and July 2021, respectively.
  • Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines are aiming to deliver 90 kg and 100 kg of payload to the Moon's surface, while OrbitBeyond targets about 40 kg although it receives about 25 million additional dollars from NASA. Whatever the case may be, it is clear that $ 250 million is extremely profitable for payloads of 230 kg (510 lb) that can be transported to the moon. In comparison, in 2015, NASA purchased a single launch of Delta IV Heavy (for its Parker solar probe) at a cost of nearly $ 390 million.
  • This $ 250 million includes not only the launch costs (two or three of them will likely become co-passengers during the Falcon 9 launches), but they also include delivery to the Moon's surface.
• In addition, an unknown proportion of this funding has clearly been devoted to the development and maturation of non-stolen and (mostly) undeveloped lunar landers, all of which could offer even more affordable lunar delivery services once development is completed. completed.

• Finally, the Russian space agency Roscosmos has apparently planned (or at least a Powerpoint) to land cosmonauts on the moon as early as 2030. To accomplish this incredibly ambitious feat, Russia would actually need to develop three entirely new rockets, two of which are very new. remote. bigger than anything Russia has built since the fall of the USSR – and a brand new crew and spaceship capable of exploiting deep space (Federation).
• The ambition is undeniably inspiring and could create a truly fascinating race that is not really a race to the moon. However, the reality is that Russia as a country and its economy are in trouble and that these difficulties are evident in Roscosmos – terribly underfunded and eternally cast as a political puck and a source of easy embezzlement.
  • A Soyuz spacecraft launched on the ISS last year has proven to have a literal hole, the likely result of sloppy manufacturing and lacking quality control. A few months later, a Soyuz 1.2 rocket failed the flight by launching a trio of astronauts, causing the first abortion / failure of a human space flight for nearly two decades.
  • The three astronauts have been found safely, but these two failures alone suggest that Russia is having trouble adjusting its budget before having any chance to carry out (let alone ensure security) its ambitious lunar program.

– Eric