That's why NASA's bold return to the moon could work well

In front of a high fidelity model of the Apollo program lunar probe, Vice President Mike Pence accused NASA of speeding up his plans for the moon last week. Instead of 2028, Pence wanted shoes on the ground four years earlier, before the end of 2024. This was the rarest moment of all spaceflights – a schedule that shifted left rather than right .

Naturally, the aerospace community has welcomed the announcement with a good deal of skepticism. Many rocket builders, spacecraft designers, flight controllers and space enthusiasts have already seen this film. In 1989 and 2004, Republican administrations announced ambitious space plans for the deep spaces Moon and Mars, but condemned them to disappear for lack of funding and with the support of the White House.

And yet, this new proposal is promising. Pence, along with NASA's Jim Bridenstine, have set a clear goal for the agency and promised sustainable political support. In addition, they said that the "end" mattered more than the "means". This suggests that, regardless of the rockets and spacecraft used by NASA to reach the Moon, the plan should be based on the most cost-effective and best-performing technology available. In short, they want to foster healthy and open competition in the US aerospace industry to help NASA and the US achieve their goals.

At a public meeting Monday for space agency employees, Bridenstine called the Moon 2024 initiative a "unique chance for NASA". This may sound a bit hyperbolic, but it represents a rare chance for the sprawling federal agency bureaucrats – whose human exploration programs have been stuck for decades – to envision a brighter future.

Therefore, this marks an important, albeit uncertain, moment in American spaceflight. To understand how we got here and where we are going, Ars spoke to a dozen well-placed sources in the aerospace industry, ranging from new space companies to big aerospace contractors to NASA executives. and political insiders. Most of them are not named because of their sensitive positions; a lot from among them see the challenges ahead.

What is the plan?

Pence ordered NASA to bring the men to the South Lunar Pole by 2024. It would likely be a crew of two or four including the first woman to visit the Moon. . Landing near the poles is important because the Apollo missions half a century ago remained relatively close to the Moon's equator, and NASA would like to know if water ice resources really exist in abundance near the equator. poles in shaded craters.

The crew would descend to the lunar surface from a lunar orbit outpost, known as the Gateway. Initially, these missions on the Moon would involve short sorties, but Pence also asked NASA to establish a permanent base on the surface of the Moon by 2028.

During its lunar explorations, NASA and its astronauts tested technologies that allowed them to survive and work in deep space for long periods of time, beyond the relative safety of low Earth orbit. . By learning about the moon, NASA could then develop plans for humans to travel to Mars in the 2030s. Bridenstine insists that the agency has not lost sight of this goal.

What is behind this?

While Pence and Bridenstine have deepened their human exploration programs over the past year, they have become frustrated with the pace of progress. A meeting with Boeing officials in mid-March, during which the main contractor of the Space Launch System rocket, said she could not get to the launch date of the June 2020 test, was a breaking point.

Pence expressed this frustration during his moon talk on March 26 at the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. According to Pence, in the 1960s, the agency needed only eight years to travel to the moon, at a time when NASA did not know how to do the job. Today, NASA has stated that she could not pose humans on the Moon until 2028, more than eleven years after President Trump set the goal to bring back human beings on the lunar surface. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is just not good enough," said Pence. "We are better than that."

Neither Bridenstine nor Pence have said so explicitly, but these comments reflect their perception that NASA has become too bureaucratic, too shy, too reluctant to take risks. Bridenstine had an eloquent response during his stay at City Hall this week when asked why, by setting such an ambitious goal of landing in 2024, did he respect it? not the calendar?

"I would not say it's a return to the schedule because of security, I would say it's a return to the schedule," he said. "Safety is paramount for everyone in this agency, it has always been. But the number one mission is not security. If that was the case, we would all stay in the waiting room and simply watch CNN. "

Pence and Bridenstine have asked NASA to do better and have sought to instil urgency into a human exploration program that has been lacking since the 1960s.

What happens next?

The leaders of the agency will try to act quickly. Bridenstine has asked NASA manned flight chief William Gerstenmaier to refine the plan for missions and vehicles that can meet the 2024 deadline. Meanwhile, Bridenstine is working with the White House and the Office of Management to determine the costs.

The President has already submitted his budget request for the 2020 financial year to Congress more than three weeks ago. The administration will have to modify NASA's budget request and submit it to Congress. At a hearing on Tuesday, Bridenstine said he hoped the amendment would be presented to Congress by April 15. This will provide the first glimpse of the cost of the new Moon program, although early estimates suggest that it might require $ 2 to $ 4 billion a year in addition to those from NASA. current budget of $ 21 billion a year. Bridenstine said that he did not want to steal other parts of the agency's budget to fund the initiative.

Bridenstine said that Pence and President Trump had joined his project but that he still had to sell it to Congress. "Based on the conversations I've had, the commitment of the administration is there. Of course, I can not speak for the Congress, "he told the town hall.