The Vice President asks NASA to return to the Moon by 2024

Tuesday, in a museum just steps from the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, Vice President Mike Pence delivered an important speech on space policy inviting US men and women to return to the Moon by 2024 If the Trump administration follows up the policies described by Pence – admittedly a huge ifThis is undoubtedly the most important speech about space since President Kennedy's Moon speech in 1962.

However, Pence's comments and some of the plans described later by NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine have raised important questions about the viability of these ideas.

In a 30-minute speech that Ars had planned last week, Mr. Pence said that NASA had been too slow for too long. Half a century ago, the agency had only eight years to travel to the moon, said Pence, when NASA did not know how to do the job. As a result, he was not satisfied with NASA's stated goal of landing humans on the Moon by 2028, 11 years after President Trump set his goal of bringing humans back to the surface of the Moon.

"Ladies and gentlemen, that just is not enough," Pence told the National Space Board at its meeting at the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. "We are better than that."

A bold speech

In setting a target of 2024 for the human landing on the moon – at the South Pole lunar, no less – Pence said that NASA had to proceed with "urgency" if it wants to achieve these goals. "It's up to this generation to rise to the challenge of our time," he said.

Pence also pointed out that the very late rocket launch system in the space of NASA posed a problem, from the point of view of budget and schedule. In calling for a "major course correction" at NASA, Mr. Pence said the agency should be willing to consider commercial alternatives to rockets and lunar earthlings if they could do the job and save of the government money.

"I call on NASA to adopt new policies and adopt a new state of mind," said Mr. Pence. "If our current entrepreneurs can not achieve this goal, we will find one who will." This was probably a reference, at least in part, to the cheaper rockets built by SpaceX and Blue Origin.

It was a daring speech (we will link to a transcript when it becomes available). In his remarks, the Vice-President clearly stated what has been an open but rarely mentioned secret in space policy circles. Major outsourcers in the Space Launch System program, Orion and other programs underperformed the billions of dollars they received. The agency is basically in "mode of development" for exploration in deep space for 15 years, without any exploration per se, and it should remain so for some time.

Following Pence's speech, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine was invited to speak for a few minutes about how NASA could achieve this goal. "You have given us an accusation today, and it is at the present time," said Bridenstine. "Thank you for this vision and leadership, and our agency, NASA, will do everything in its power to meet this deadline."

To do this, however, Bridenstine has doubled the Space Launch System rocket. "If we want to reach 2024, we have to have the SLS," said Bridenstine. The rocket will no longer be delayed, he said. In fact, although NASA engineers say internally that the booster can not be ready until 2021, its launch date will be advanced.

Bridenstine announced Tuesday that the Mission-1 Exploration, which was to pilot an unprepared version of Orion around the Moon, would continue on the SLS recall in 2020. This announcement was made less than two weeks after his suggestion to make NASA the first lunar flight. of Orion on commercial rockets due to ongoing SLS delays.

In another surprising turnaround, Bridenstine also said that the agency now had to speed up work on an advanced upper stage of the SLS rocket, known as the Advanced Stage of Exploration. This will be necessary for the third or fourth flight of the SLS rocket (probably part of the preparation for lunar missions). But Bridenstine did not say why. On the other hand, the President's budget request released earlier this month called for postponing funding for this next step until it is necessary. Anyway, it is difficult to see this higher stage, essentially a new rocket, be ready by 2024.

NASA will also simultaneously pursue the development of a lunar gateway (a small outpost near the moon), which would serve as a transit point in orbit for surface missions. And NASA will begin (and complete) the development of lunar landers, probably through commercial vendors. It's a lot to put on the NASA plate, certainly too much if we base ourselves on the past performance of the agency.

In summary

All this is ambitious because Pence's vision is to get NASA and its former subcontractors out of their normal situation.

What happens next is not entirely clear. Few budget was mentioned. Unless NASA completely abandons the SLS program and its $ 3 billion annual budget, the agency will not have the funds to implement a lunar landing program. But as a loss of SLS seems unlikely (at least for now), NASA's exploration program will require a multi-billion dollar injection to be viable. Later in the meeting, Pence motioned to James Herz, associate director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget. "Well, let's come to the CAMO," said Pence.

It is also unclear to what extent Congress will be moved by this initiative. Clearly, Bridenstine's remarks Tuesday on the launch of Orion on SLS reflect the repression of Richard Shelby, Senator from Alabama, who supports the development of the large rocket in his state at the Marshall Space Flight Center. Senator with power over NASA's budget obviously said no to a commercially launched Orion Yes funding for the Upper Stage Exploration.

In summary, while Pence was promising a groundbreaking approach to spaceflight during his speech on Tuesday, Bridenstine's proposed architecture – which includes the SLS rocket, Gateway and Upper Stage Exploration – is very similar to the current situation.