Why did the Artemis moon landing project in the United States cooperate with the private sector after completing the "Apollo" project? Will this have an impact on the U.S. space race with China, India, and Japan?
A private company based in Houston will lead a moon landing operation this week that, if successful, would be the first U.S. country to land on the moon in 50 years after the Apollo program.
A few days ago, since China, India, and Japan have successfully landed on Mars, a new round of manned lunar landing programs in the eastern United States has successfully taken off on the 14th of this month.
So why entrust such a big mission to a commercial organization? Especially after the efforts of Astrobotic went bankrupt last month.
The answer is that NASA is undergoing a complete overhaul of Artemis' flagship project.
During the Cold War, NASA could get a blank check to take care of everything industrial, from top to bottom, from top to bottom, dictated by America's huge market, and this new model would be a historic breakthrough at a fraction of the cost.
While existing methods have worked, the United States may still be at a disadvantage in completing the next major lunar exploration program (the next manned landing on the moon and bringing the first asteroid back from Mars).
A victory for SpaceX.
NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Service (CLPS) program focused its attention on start-ups because of the rise of SpaceX. SpaceX was teased for being reckless at first, but has now become the agency's favorite contractor.
Scott Scott, a former member of the U.S. Space Council, said NASA intends to adopt a strategy to "get more" with lower spending.
"SpaceX's current reliability depends on how many rockets it destroys during launch," he said. ”
After the NASA-led space program is completed, the United States will have to rely on Russia's Soyuz rocket, which is now the only way astronauts want to take off on Earth.
Musk's company defeated the popular aerospace giant Boeing, showing professionals the importance of competing among multiple options.
According to a report published in the journal Nature, the cost of launching a spacecraft (adjusted for inflation) will reach more than $2 billion, while NASA will spend about $55 million on a launch site for SpaceX after review.
Project Artemis.
Dreyer, a researcher at the nonprofit Planet Alliance, said NASA received more than $300 billion during the Apollo era, more than Artemis estimated to spend $93 billion to achieve.
Nowadays, instead of letting a private company build it, it's better to buy something directly from the company to do it.
NASA not only has a large space launch vehicle (SLS) and the Orion manned spacecraft, but it has also signed a new landing device with SpaceX based on its next-generation Starship, a new, unproven landing method that will prepare for the first human landing on the moon.
The test flight of the spacecraft has not yet ended, and it will happen**. Without relying on SLS, it will undergo several extremely low temperature resupply in orbit before returning to the moon to dock with the Orion space station and transport astronauts.
In the future, building space fuel depots may be an excellent way to advance a long-range landing on Mars — Musk's SpaceX company originally envisioned it — but if these fuel depots are to be used, then the Americans' plans to return to the moon will be delayed.
NASA said the plan could be completed as soon as 2026, but the plan could be extended.
For better or worse, the United States has fallen into a new model of public-private partnerships.
In order to avoid failure, the Artemis project intends to work with Europe, Canada, Japan, the United Arab Emirates and many other countries from the beginning.
The last lunar exploration project"Constellations", the last lunar exploration project conceived at the beginning of the 21st century, was managed in a similar way to the Apollo program, but was later withdrawn, largely because of financial constraints and not very practical.