South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Artemis funding concerns raised
NASA leaders say Congress may cut future budgets
NASA leaders are sounding an alarm about funding by Congress that could threaten the pace of the Artemis lunar missions.
NASA Associate Administrator Bob Cabana was joined Wednesday during SpaceCom in Orlando for an opening chat with Alicia Brown, an associate administrator of NASA’s Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs.
The two honed in on the reduced budget Congress passed for the 2023 fiscal year after the administration’s initial request for nearly $26 billion.
“I think this year is going to be even more challenging for us, [with] what we have to accomplish in order to set our course for the future and ensure that we are successful,” Cabana said at the event being held at the Orange County Convention Center.
NASA received $25.4 billion, which is about $1.3 billion more than what it received in 2022, a 5.6% increase, but still $554 million less than requested.
While the success of the long-delayed Artemis I moon mission gave NASA a win last year, Brown said keeping the money flowing for the program is going to take some convincing.
“Congress is 535 individuals that don’t necessarily think or speak with one voice,” she said. “And also the entire House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate is up for reelection every two years. So we’re constantly having to re-educate the Congress about what NASA’s doing, what our commercial and international partners are doing, and why it’s important to them.”
And while NASA missions, including Artemis, often draw bipartisan support, Brown said she worries the latest Congress will consider shifting gears on the nation’s moon program. The NASA budget projections call for budget increases each year up to $28.1 billion in 2028.
“It is going to be a tough couple of years for us. It’s no secret that the Republican Congress in the House ... they’re concerned about how much the government is spending and what our debt looks like, and wanting to maybe right now go back to a little bit of fiscal austerity,” she said.
She said they have spoken about going back or holding government spending at 2022 levels.
“I think we’re concerned about how that affects human spaceflight and Artemis, but it’s going to impact all of our programs,” she said.
The fact that there is a two-year gap between Artemis I and the planned launch of the first crewed flight, Artemis II, has dampened some of the support, she said. Artemis III isn’t slated to fly until at least 2025, but that could slip to 2026 or later as well.
“What we can do right now in this fiscal year is to ensure that there’s not a big gap between Artemis III, our first landing, and Artemis IV,” she said. “We and hopefully our partners are going to spend a lot of time on the Hill talking about why it’s important.”
A big argument they will make, she said, is China beating the U.S. and its partners to the punch, and potentially threatening lunar resources by staking a claim. She also thinks Congress can be convinced NASA should be the first there, not leaving the accomplishment to the private space industry.
“Congress needs to make those investments now so that we can ensure we’ve got a strong, steady cadence of lunar landings,” she said.
The cost of Artemis I has been placed at about $4.1 billion by NASA’s Office of the Inspector General.
The program had seen delays from its contractors including Boeing with the Space Launch System due to construction problems, COVID and more than half a dozen hurricanes that followed the various parts of Artemis from New Orleans to Mississippi and finally to
Kennedy Space Center.
When originally announced by NASA in 2012, the first launch was to have taken place by as early as 2016 with expected costs of $500 million per launch. The cost projection for each launch has increased to more than eight times higher per launch through the first four missions, according to estimates in the November 2021 audit by the Inspector General.
By 2025, which could include launches through Artemis III and preparations for Artemis IV, the cost is expected to top $93 billion, the audit stated.
Mark Nappi, a Boeing vice president at the conference sitting in on an Artemis I panel, didn’t shy away from the delays and spotlight put on his company.
“We were probably a little aggressive in our planning of what we thought we could do, and that opened us up to a lot of criticism,” he said. “I think a valuable lesson learned with these development programs is to really put the right planning in upfront so you can set expectations at the right level and then perform to them.”
He said two major manufacturing headaches ended up leading to two years delay, for instance.
“Has anybody ever put together their kids’ Christmas presents on Christmas Eve? Does it take longer than you thought? Did you do it twice? So that’s where we’re at. We built one core stage. We learned a great deal from that build and now we need to apply that same thing to core stage 2,” he said.
That stage is nearly complete and expected to be delivered to Kennedy Space Center by summer.
Meanwhile, the Orion capsule for Artemis II already at KSC is going through testing so the assembly of the Artemis II rocket could be possible before the end of the year. Even so, no launch is expected until at least May 2024 and likely closer to the end of the year, NASA officials have said.
Beyond that, though, the Orion capsules for Artemis III and IV are already at KSC in various forms of completion, said Kelly DeFasio, Lockheed Martin’s Orion program director.
“For the first time we have three in flow, which was the plan for the Orion spacecraft,” she said noting that supply chain movement is already in the works for Artemis V-VIII as well. “My bosses are always telling me, ‘OK, just get ready to turn that knob. We can go faster. We can go faster.’ So we want to make sure our infrastructure supports that.”
The bulk buys and refined processes for construction should bring those Artemis costs down for all of the contractors, Nappi said.
“We’ve learned how to build this vehicle. It was done very much by brute force the first time,” he said. “Now we’re applying all the industrial engineering concepts to get the cost down because we know this vehicle can be built and launched and operated at much lower cost.”