Pay for Artemis: How much will it cost to return to the moon?

This article was originally published in SpaceNews magazine on June 10, 2019.

Since US Vice President Mike Pence has asked NASA to accelerate its human return calendar to the surface of the four-year-old moon, the agency has been trying to describe how it could achieve this goal. In the weeks and months following Pence's March speech, NASA presented a rough plan for what it now calls the Artemis program, including what needs to be built – SLS and Orion, a gateway "Minimal" and lunar landers – and how. can meet in time for a landing in 2024.

However, the agency has been less open about the cost than it would cost. On May 13, NASA finally released a long-awaited budget amendment for fiscal year 2020, aimed at leveraging an additional $ 1.6 billion to support work on the SLS, lunar landing gear and related technologies.

However, the agency's managers acknowledge that this amount is only a deposit on the total cost of Artemis. This total cost was not disclosed, although NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine rejected reports that it would cost up to $ 8 billion a year for five years.

"We anticipate that in the coming years, the current amount will be greater than the current $ 1.6 billion for 2020. We all know it," he said in a presentation on the current year. budget amendment. "We work day after day to find these numbers for years to come."

These global cost estimates exist, at least at NASA headquarters. "We have these numbers, and we are still discussing them internally," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations (HEO), at a meeting of the company's advisory board. The NASA. "I hesitate to give you the number because we are still at this deliberation."

This does not preclude people, such as board members and support committees, from asking for more details about its cost. "Is not it true that funding for a development program follows, I would say, almost a bell curve?" Said Wayne Hale, chairman of the committee's Human Exploration and Operations Council , at a meeting on May 28. "$ 1.6 billion is only a down payment, is not it?

"We are expecting a budget increase in 21, 22, 23 and 24," said Ken Bowersox, assistant deputy director of exploration and human operations. "In HEO, we have already prepared budget forecasts, but we do not talk about them publicly until we have the agreement of all our stakeholders that it is acceptable to make."

"It makes sense," he said of the internal budgets. "That's all I can say for the moment."

⇒ See "Bridenstine estimates that Artemis would cost between $ 20 billion and $ 30 billion"

What is reasonable for one person or organization may, however, be unreasonable for another. This is also true of the source of money. Bridenstine and others pointed out that for 2020, Artemis would be fully funded with "new" funds, in the form of additional funding requested in the budget amendment, rather than by a transfer of funds from 39, another organization of the agency.

"It has been tried in the past to cannibalize part of NASA to fund another part of NASA," Bridenstine said at an astronomy workshop in April. "This way does not work."

He has emphasized this point several times since. "We have received support for a budget request that says we are going to take a step forward and that we are going to finance that, and that we will not be able to cannibalize NASA to finance it," he said. he told NASA's Advisory Council on May 30th.

Gerstenmaier, however, offered a different take, at least for the following years. "When we turn 21, I do not think we can get the entire budget as new money," or the overall budget of the agency, he told the council the next day.

He suggested that to fully fund Artemis in 2021 and beyond, money will have to come from elsewhere in the agency, either within its own management or elsewhere at NASA. "We will have to look for efficiencies and make internal cuts to the agency, and that's where it will be difficult," he said.

And, he hinted, potentially divisive. "Everyone can be on board when everything is moving forward and an infinite amount of new money goes to the agency."

The official branch line remains however that Artemis will be funded without affecting the priorities of other agencies, such as science. "Everyone is looking for efficiencies in budget management and that's what Mr. Gerstenmaier talked about in his presentation to the NASA Advisory Board," said NASA spokesman Bob. Jacobs, in a statement. "However, the administrator said that we would not do any scientific looting to pay Artemis and this is the position of the agency."

This additional funding for 2020 is yet to be obtained. NASA and the White House have released the budget amendment for 2020 just before the Parliamentary Appropriations Committee publishes its version of a bill of expenditure for trade, Justice and Science (CJS) that funds NASA. This bill did not incorporate the amended budget and the committee members neither rejected nor discussed the amendment when the bill was signed later in the month.

It's just a question of bad timing, Bridenstine told the board, not a rejection of this proposal. "Do not get me wrong: there are people who have questions or people who have concerns, people who are interested in where the money comes from," he said, referring to the White House proposal to pay this additional funding from an existing surplus in the Pell Grant Fund, which helps low-income students pay for their education. This part of the proposal has attracted a lot of criticism inside and outside the Congress.

Bridenstine said he expects a warmer reception in the Senate, which has not yet tagged its version of a spending bill regarding the SJC. Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Chair of the SSC Credit Subcommittee, indicated his willingness to support NASA projects.

Ultimately, the Senate bill will have to be reconciled with a House bill that provides additional funding for NASA's science programs and some elements of its exploration efforts, including SLS and Orion. It is a process that, according to recent history, will probably take months.

"People said we were in the second inning," said Bridenstine at the credit process council meeting. "I'm here to tell you that I think we're at the top of the first run."

Management course

This may be the first run, but NASA has not been able to find the plate in its first steps in Congress.

As part of the deployment of accelerated lunar exploration plans in March, Bridenstine said NASA would seek to establish a "Moon to Mars Mission Direction" to implement what's now called Artemis. . It would come from the human exploration and operations missions branch of the organization, possibly including some space technology or science programs.

"When we talk about operations and development, it's two very different types of capabilities" with different skills, he said at a public meeting organized by NASA in April. "We are talking here about a development-oriented mission leadership."

Such a reorganization required Congressional approval. In an internal note on May 23, however, Bridenstine said Congress rejected the proposal, but did not explain why. Instead, "we will move forward with our current organizational structure within the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate."

This decision resulted in the departure of Mark Sirangelo, an aerospace industry executive who joined NASA earlier in the year as a special assistant director in charge of supporting the Artemis planning. It was generally expected that he would become associate director of this new mission direction if Congress had approved it.

"Since NASA is no longer pursuing the new direction of the mission, Mark has chosen to pursue other opportunities," wrote Bridenstine. Sources within the agency said the two did not agree on how NASA should handle Artemis when Congress rejected the mission's leadership.

In his first public comments since leaving the agency, during a speech on June 6 in Arlington, Virginia, by the National Space Society (ISDC) at the National Space Society, Sirangelo said he was came to NASA to help achieve this lunar landing goal. necessary."

"I spent the last three months as a special assistant to help understand three things: what is the way to the moon, how is it funded and what restructuring will be done?" necessary to achieve this, "he said. At the time of his departure in May, NASA had developed a plan and submitted the budget amendment for 2020, but was not able to advance on the restructuring.

His departure has shocked some in the space industry. "Given NASA's past performance, there are many questions about whether NASA can meet this deadline," said Robert Walker, former chair of the House's Science Committee, who served as policy advisor. Space at the Trump Campaign in 2016, June 5 Speech at ISDC.

"NASA has recently returned to the Hill and asked for the creation of a new leadership grouping all of these programs." Congress shook its head, saying, "No, we will not go there. "he said, encouraging Sirangelo to leave NASA," with probably a very good reason. "

"He was a very, very good choice for this kind of program," Walker said of Sirangelo. "I thought it was an inspired choice. But, Congress has essentially put the kibosh on trying to go ahead that way. "

When asked why he thought Congress had rejected the new direction, Walker offered an explanation in one word: Money.

At the NASA Advisory Board meeting, Gerstenmaier supported the decision not to create the new leadership. "It breaks a lot of pipes that would have occurred between the two directions. It allows us to innovate, "he said.

Instead, he said his management would undergo organizational changes to ensure that the Artemis program has clear authorities, including being able to work directly with other mission directorates such as space technology. "You will see future changes on the organizational side."

Sirangelo, in his ISDC speech, stressed the need for what he called a "strong central management" for Artemis, inspired by the management of previous major programs, both at the time of the conference. inside and outside of NASA. "It is usually a person working for political leadership who led a small team of high-level technical, administrative and financial officers who oversaw all elements of the project," he said, citing George Mueller, who led Apollo for more than six years, through Apollo 11.

"In my opinion, he concluded, this is what must happen to make the Moon program progress."