Former NASA administrator says Lunar Gateway is "stupid architecture"

In recent weeks, NASA officials have launched a charm offensive on their "Gateway" project in the lunar space, which would serve as a space station in a distant orbit around the moon. The agency proposed this intermediate step instead of returning directly to the lunar surface with humans. The agency even started talking about the catwalk as a "spaceship", no doubt because it sounds more exciting than a "station".

Public criticism of the proposal has been limited to date, in part because much of the aerospace community has the potential to win contracts by helping to build the lunar space station or by supplying it with consumables. once that it will be operational in the middle of the period. 2020s. (We talked to some public critics for an article published in September.)

However, at a meeting of the National Space Council's User Advisory Group on Thursday, some of the criticisms we heard in private spread to the public eye. One of the committee members, Apollo 11 astronaut, Buzz Aldrin, said: "I am quite opposed to the bridge."

Eileen Collins, the first woman to command a space shuttle, feared that NASA's schedule to bring humans back to the moon's surface did not seem "remote". As part of its bridge development project in the mid-2020s, NASA acknowledged that humans would not return to the moon's surface until the end of the 2020s or 2030s. being put on the lunar space station, NASA has no specific project as to how it will place humans on the lunar surface or how much it will cost.

Mike Griffin, one of the guests of the meeting, was asked about his vision of such a timeline. Former NASA director under the presidency of George W. Bush and current Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Griffin did not mince his words when it comes to the current project to delay the return of the United States to the moon for at least a decade.

"Stupid architecture"

Griffin added, "I think 2028 is so late that we do not even have to be on the table, such a date does not prove that the US is late, we are in 2018. It took us Eight years to go to the moon the first time and you will tell me that it takes 10 to 12 hours to do it again when you know how to do it, I just want to put a flag on the game. "

Griffin also criticized the Gateway concept, saying that it was not logical to build a lunar station before it was necessary to resort to such a station.

"The architecture set up, setting up a gateway before getting on the moon, is, from the perspective of a space systems engineer, a stupid architecture," he said. "Gateway is useful when, but not before, we build a propeller on the Moon and send it to a lunar orbit deposit, we should be able to fly back to the moon and learn how to use the resources of our object. nearest Earth orbit. "

In the course of his other comments, Griffin cautioned against the conflicting uses of space by American enemies, notably China and Russia. Beyond military satellites, he said that China could strike a geopolitical blow by landing humans on the moon before the return of the United States, a significant and visible achievement that would signal Chinese descent in the eyes of countries non-aligned.

Griffin no longer has a supervisory role at NASA, but he remains an influential player in US space policy and has considerable access to key decision makers in the vice president's office. His comments on Thursday represent the first real criticism of the Gateway concept emanating from a senior manager of the administration.