The report does not include a requirement the Senate version included for NASA to select a second HLS provider. Instead, it directs NASA to provide a report within 30 days of enactment “explaining how it will ensure safety, redundancy, sustainability, and competition in the HLS program within the resources provided by this Act and included in the fiscal year 2023 budget request.”

Wow. Really Congress? After Congress cut the original HLS budget request by 75%? That's your move?

It's like a bully who taunts his victim, "stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself"!!

$L$ delenda est

The omnibus bill includes $1.195 billion for NASA’s Human Landing System (HLS) program to develop a lunar lander version of SpaceX’s Starship vehicle for the Artemis 3 and potentially future missions.

Welp, that ain't nothing. Nonetheless by only requesting that much, NASA has conceded to Congressional wishes about the level of HLS spending.

NASA has also stretched out the timeline of Project Artemis by at least two years. I wonder, how much blame for that delay can be placed on SLS delays, vs Congress underfunding the HLS program?

Of course that delay also means an extra $7 billion(!) added to the tab for SLS; at a rate of $3.5 billion per year for the rocket to nowhere.

$L$ delenda est

Useful table.

"Language in the report restricts funding on several programs, including HLS, commercial LEO development, the lunar Gateway and other advanced exploration initiatives, to 40% of allocated levels until NASA submits a multiyear plan for the Artemis effort to Congress. That plan must include the schedule of Space Launch System launches for building the Gateway, additional scientific activities on the moon and “the commencement of partnerships with commercial entities for additional LEO missions to land humans and rovers on the Moon.”

Yeah, it would be nice to know what the plan is ahead of time, instead of this 'making it up as we go along' feeling that there has been for the last several years. The dates on the calendar are less important than simply having concrete milestones. It would be nice to know what we are actually going to do on the Moon once we get there, and then get those activities funded.

I would suggest that the plan is to see how Starship performs...and if it does good, lean on it for all it's worth going forward. I don't believe they will be sending that plan to Congress.

It would also be nice to know what the eff Congress means when they say NASA has to provide a "detailed plan" regarding Project Artemis.

It's not as if the plan for Project Artemis plan is some dark secret. We all know the plan. We debate the merits of the plan all the time.

It seems to me that what Congress is really asking for is just more opportunities to grandstand and pass the buck. Remember these are the same clowns who have saddled NASA with SLS. It seems to me what Congress really wants is a rerun of Project Apollo, so they are attempting to force NASA to do exactly that by demanding a "detailed plan".

Considering how little NASA really knows about the Moon today, it is impossible to have a plan of the sort of detail which Congress seems to be asking for. How can NASA make a detailed plan for 2030, if we don't even know today the nature of the lunar ice? A lot of what NASA should do in the near future, will have to be based upon what they learn in the process of conducting Project Artemis.

$L$ delenda est

TBH not sure there is much point to it as long as they do not know what rockets and landers are available, what money they have to work with or the price points of the lunar landers. And that is on top of the risk, cost and schedule issues normally derailing space programs. And new Artemis partners are still joining so they don't even know what they can delegate, let alone how long those things will take.

Until BFR flies, SpaceX won't have a reasonable schedule.

Until Vulcan and New Glenn fly, the national Team and the Alpaca team can not make realistic weight restraints on their landers, nor can they make a good cost estimate even for the launch. Without additional development cost, they will not even try.

And until the CLPS missions start landing on the Moon, it will be difficult to make an indication of the complexity, and getting feedback on designs and science measurements about where to land. For now, they are all delayed.

There is only one thing they can set:
"schedule of Space Launch System launches for Gateway", = 0
They don't have the SLS, they don't have money for SLS, and none of the other hardware will likely be ready before the 2025 NSSL-3 rockets come online.
But congress would not like to hear that answer.

"TBH not sure there is much point to it as long as they do not know what rockets and landers are available, what money they have to work with or the price points of the lunar landers." I don't know what you're talking about. SLS/Orion/Starship HLS are the chosen pieces of the system. When the pieces is will be ready and how much it will all cost in the end is an unknown, but we know what the pieces will be.

"Until Vulcan and New Glenn fly,..." The 'National' team and Dynetics lost their bids for the HLS, why are you talking about them? The consolation prize of the follow-up lander missions is an unfunded afterthought at this point. They can't serve any redundancy function because there isn't the funding or time to fix the flaws in their proposals.

"They don't have the SLS, they don't have money for SLS" I mean, there is a chance it blows up on the pad, but SLS certainly exists. The latest budget also proves that there is ALWAYS money for SLS, no matter how behind schedule or over budget it is. NASA is stuck with SLS. Vulcan and New Glenn (or Falcon Heavy) are not replacements for SLS, they aren't big enough, although Starship could be.

They are talking about 'the Artemis effort' which I take to be beyond just the first landing mission.
Because as you point out, the missions up to the first landing are more or less scheduled and paid for.

Both Gateway and Starship still have to do their first demonstration flight, the success of which may determine a lot of the remaining work pace.
And even if they go along plan, NASA is still a long way from
"ensure safety, redundancy, sustainability, and competition in the HLS program" for the following missions.
Which is where other alternatives come in to play - but those known are not ready - and new players may emerge in the coming years. How would NASA accommodate for them in their schedules and budgets?

"That plan must include the schedule of Space Launch System launches for building the Gateway"
The SLS part was about this line where they want to launch Gateway parts on it. But a few years back they decided that all SLS's were reserved for Moon landings, and they could spare none for other things like science missions due to its production rate. Now the Gateway core (On FalconHeavy) has been delayed to 2025/6 and the other modules will come even later. So by then things may change. However NASA can not build a reliable schedule on that yet.

I admit I should have phrased it a bit more coherently for an outside audience, but I presumed everyone reading here regularly could follow along.

"How would NASA accommodate for them in their schedules and budgets?" If someone else (a domestic commercial company or one from an ally i.e not China or Russia) develops a crewed lander NASA would be happy to use it, but none exist besides on the back of a napkin. Most commercial companies (and national space programs if you want to include India) are still learning how to do LEO, the Moon is not even in the same ballpark beyond small CLPs payloads. NASA doesn't have to worry about this question for at least ten years, if not twenty.

"It also directs $110 million of that funding to nuclear thermal propulsion development, which was not included in the administration’s proposal." - Jeff Foust

It isn't funding for nuclear fusion rocket engines or nuclear pulse propulsion systems, but nonetheless propellant efficient nuclear thermal rocket propulsion and nuclear and solar electric propulsion are the beginnings of reusable high delta-v capable Spaceships.

Nuclear Pulse Propulsion. The critical element of the NPP system has been tested over 1000 times. It has an Isp an order of magnitude (and this is not Musk hyperbole) greater than NTR's. Truth.

Trying to contain a reaction a million times more powerful than chemicals when it is difficult just keeping chemical rockets from melting, is an exercise in futility. At incredible expense, you get comparatively little improvement. NTR's are a dead end.

People like von Braun with wet workshops. Freeman Dyson with Nuclear Pulse, Eugene Parker with radiation shielding, Paul Spudis with Lunar Resources, and Gerard K. O'Neill with Space Solar Power, had all we need to know figured out long before the SpaceX wunderkind decided he knew it all. The world is slowly being dragged, kicking and screaming, as with the Lunar return, which was verboten for years, toward the realization that NewSpace is the wrong path.

Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, or perhaps something even much better, is coming but it probably isn't coming soon. I'll take Spaceships with nuclear thermal rocket engine propulsion systems and nuclear or solar electric propulsion Spaceships in the meantime.

If our Cold War II with China and Russia continues into the 2040s, we may begin to see some real funding for nuclear pulse propulsion powered Spaceships. Time will tell. Note:

“In the mid-1990s, research at Pennsylvania State University led to the concept of using antimatter
to catalyze nuclear reactions. Antiprotons would react inside the nucleus of uranium, releasing energy that breaks the nucleus apart as in conventional nuclear reactions. Even a small number of such reactions can start the chain reaction that would otherwise require a much larger volume of fuel to sustain. Whereas the 'normal' critical mass for plutonium is about 11.8 kilograms (for a sphere at standard density), with antimatter catalyzed reactions this could be well under one gram."

“Several rocket designs using this reaction were proposed, some which would use all-fission reactions for interplanetary missions, and others using fission-fusion (effectively a very small version of Orion's bombs) for interstellar missions.”

Quotes from: “Nuclear pulse propulsion” Wikipedia
At: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

"- it probably isn't coming soon."

No James....it is already here. It WAS here back in the early 60's. Completely feasible and practical. It is OLD technology. Don't you get it?

none of it is more that vapor ware.

Speaking of vapor, see:

“The hole in the ozone layer, Earth’s protective chemical shield that absorbs most of the sun’s ultraviolet rays, has slowly healed over the last few decades since the global ban of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). But scientists are now raising the alarm about puncturing a new hole in the ozone layer—this time without any noticeable CGCs in sight.”

Quote from: “All the Satellites in Space Could Crack Open the Ozone Layer
Mega-constellations might end up being a massive problem.”
By Caroline Delbert June 17, 2021
At: https://www.popularmechanic...

1000 nuclear tests. You can't just lie Vlad. Only Trumpist's can get away with that because of their disease. The Musk fanboys have a lot of those, but you are not a Trumpist. Have you been poisoned by them? I think so.

that does not prove pusher plate technology .. only that we know how to make a bomb.

Very few technologies have been studied so long and so well. Ronald Reagan's Star Wars directed energy weapon programs spent vast sums on shaping nuclear explosions. It is still all classified and directly relates to concentrating and projecting clouds of plasma. What do you want to do with that? They spent nobody knows how much money trying to knock down ICBM warheads and could not make that work- but they certainly know how to make a bomb do what they want. I know what I want that technology to do. There is enough bomb-grade material in storage around the world, not in bombs, just a security problem in storage, for about 200 missions to the outer solar system. The ocean moons of the gas and ice giants. And you can go with a small ship or an immense ship in the hundreds of thousands of tons- by adding a couple teaspoons of tritium to the pulse units. The reason NOT to go is that we cannot build ships anywhere near large enough to take advantage of that energy and it is a waste of fissile material. But there is always breeder reactors on the Moon as an option when we need more. The best reason of all; such spaceships, loaded with a couple thousand such devices each, can deflect any comet/asteroid impact threat to Earth. It is almost as if this propulsion system was designed to do that- instead of pushing a plate they are pushing ice or rock. This is of course not a NewSpace arena. Only governments are going to do this. Nobody is going to hand over nuclear devices to "entrepreneurs." Likely why such derision and scorn is heaped upon the concept; Elon can't do it.

Although it was not a direct test of pusher plate technology in Operation Plumbbob a steel cap over a test hole was pushed to a speed of around 150,000 miles an hour but they were unable to recover it.

Though it did not get good reviews and went out of print quickly, I highly recommend "Project Orion- the true story of the atomic spaceship" by George Dyson, Freeman Dyson's son. One of a half a dozen books that profoundly changed my worldview. You can find used copies for about 18-20 bucks on Amazon. Or if you are near a big city library they sometimes have it.

The reason it may sound like I am against this type of propulsion is first and foremost politics. I just do not see how it would fly politically. The anti nucs would be all over this in a heartbeat about fallout and the risks of accidents. Heck look at how backwards the U.S. is when it comes to nuclear power in general and now tell them you want to launch a nuke? I just do not see it happening so I prefer to just skirt that propulsion altogether and focus on what is possible to get serious funding for.

To reassure folks, start and end deep space missions for the reusable Nuclear Pulse powered Spaceships at the electric propulsion powered Gateway Spaceship in a Lunar orbit which is far away from the Earth.

Get some people like climate change activists behind it and popularize it as a way to actually get nuclear weapons OFF the Earth and months away in deep space. We get another rock like Chelyabinsk that does some damage it might change everything. But one must be very careful wishing for something like that. I like nuclear reactors on the Moon and on Earth as long as necessary to make fissile material but not for commercial power. Anything for-profit inevitably degrades till corrected due to corruption and greed and that kind of roller coaster is unacceptable with nuclear energy. Just my opinion.

Not impossible that it could fly. Keep an open mind Vlad.

I "get it". I've gotten it for 55+ years. But the consistent political support and funding needed for America and Europe and Japan and India to build such nuclear pulse powered Spaceships are not yet available. Of course, when imperialist and genocidal China and Russia might decide to start building such nuclear pulse powered Spaceships is a different issue.

I think it is interesting that the most important piece of hardware that enables NPP is in production right now: The Launch Abort System on the SLS. Any well designed capsule/tower combination makes getting the "pulse unit" primary components into space safely fairly straightforward.

You see to transport the fissile "pits" into space you have to do it with extreme insurance that the HEU or Plutonium does not get blown into a cloud of radioactive debris in the event of a launch anomaly. A capsule/escape tower is about the most foolproof arrangement ever devised for that very purpose. If the pits are appropriately packaged large numbers can be carried and even if the capsule is seriously damaged to the point where humans might not survive, the pits would easily come through it.

In regards to "something much better", the concept most likely to be what everyone would expect in a nuclear propulsion system has had much theoretical work done on it.
Fission Fragment Propulsion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...
Enjoy!
Too bad it would require a whole brand new nuclear industry to produce the required Am 242 in usable amounts. I would guess something in the neighborhood of a trillion dollars to make that happen.

The most impractical concept is Zubrin's nuclear salt water rocket. Very bad idea. Exactly what you would expect from someone who thinks Mars is someplace we should live.

1.2 billion to build something of something that already exists???

No, this is just the FY2022 component of the SpaceX HLS contract award - it's part of the $2.89 billion contract for Lunar Starship. It's spread out over 3 fiscal years, paid out as SpaceX achieves required milestones.

NASA wants to do a follow on award for landing systems called Lunar Exploration Transportation Services (LETS), which would open up to another lander provider, but Congress has not funded that yet.

Still the going nowhere nuclear rocket projects but not the propellant depots that would be useful from the get go?

SpaceX and ULA already have refueling/depot subsidies, and there are multiple other companies working on it.
I think these may already happen without much government effort.

SpaceX's HLS contract includes a propellant depot Starship as a key component.

Not much of this budget was a surprise. But the really big item that *did* surprise me is that this Congress stiffed the administration on its earth sciences budget request. By $185 million, no less.

Wow, $110M more to SLS that could have been used for actual scientific research.

Not a great budget, but way better than last year's anent the two programs with actual futures - HLS and commercial LEO.

If you want to go to the Moon instead of Mars, yes. There is already a commercial Mars crew lander proposal to put the money more directly into.

I want to stay in LEO, go to the Moon, go to Mars and go to a lot of other places too. And I don't want to abandon any of them in order to go someplace else. The U.S. didn't abandon NYC in order to build Chicago and it didn't abandon Chicago in order to build L.A. Serial ghost towns are not the way to settle space.

But, so long as government funding is key, that's all we'll be able to do. So government funding must become not only less key, but pretty much irrelevant. That means the places we go in space have to be commercially viable to survive and grow on their own. Most of NASA's budget does not advance that future state of affairs. The budgets for HLS and LEO commercialization do.

But both amount to pump-priming only. As little as five years hence, I expect most activity in both LEO and on the Moon to occur independently of whatever relative pittance the government chooses to spend in either place.

Exploration and settlement of Mars I expect to be almost entirely private-sector initiatives from the get-go. SpaceX will soon have the capability to explore and settle Mars on its own. NASA has no such capability nor does any other Earth government space agency. None of these have any realistic plans to do so either.

SpaceX will soon have the capability to explore and settle Mars on its own. NASA has no such capability nor does any other Earth government space agency.

It is too early to say with confidence (to put it mildly) that SpaceX could build out a self-sustaining Mars colony out of its resources (or those of any commercial partners it acquires for the effort). But I think there's good reason to think . . . they could get some crewed missions there, and a small base, in the 2030's, with minimal assistance from NASA or any other space agency.

Which is certainly more than NASA could do in my lifetime. Or probably even this century.

I might disagree with you on Biden, FDR and am a New Dealer at heart. I am a hard core un repentant Democrat , but I do agree that government can't keep funding things 100% and I don't think we should be abandoning places like LEO. I don't think that exploration and settlement of Mars will be 100% private but it sure as heck won't be 100% government either.

The way forward for LEO (unless Bezos decides to finally ante up) is probably via Axion and its addition to the ISS.

What a huge disappointment you are in for.

I rather doubt it. The idea of propellant depots is as old as the idea of staging rockets.

Show me that. Stop making stuff up. Show me something.

The rocket equation is what gives you the reason. The rocket equation gives you the amount of mass in propellant that a rocket needs to generate a certain amount of delta V(change in velocity).

The problem is that as Delta V increases the amount of propellant you need increases exponentially. Basically it takes propellant to move propellant. If you had to contain all the propellant needed to get to the moon in a single stage it would be an impossibly large rocket.

Staging is one way to control this. The Saturn V first stage didn't need enough propellant to take the whole stack to the moon, it only need enough propellant to give the 2nd stage(and the rest of the stack) enough delta V to it's job. The 2nd stage likewise and so on for the 3rd stage and Apollo Command module. The Delta V needed to get to and from the moon and back was broken up over three rocket stages, an CM and a two stage lander. The downside to staging is all those unique elements you have to build, develop and throw away.

Refueling is another method of handling this. In the case of refueling instead of carrying all the propellant you need for the whole mission at launch. The propellant is filled in orbit or on the surface of another world like the moon or mars. This like staging reduces the size of the rocket need to something practical. The difference is that with refueling the only limit to the total amount of Delta V a stage can have is by the amount of propellant you can refuel it with. Imagine what you could do with something as powerful as an Saturn V 2nd stage fully fueled in Orbit vs. just it's 3rd.

Exactly my reaction: "Could have been a lot worse."

Indeed

https://uploads.disquscdn.c...

Those aren't wasps, man. They're valuable legacy aerospace workforces!

A lot of those people are aging out of the workforce.

I’ve corresponded a bit with a guy down at MSFC who’s just a few years out of school. He’s talked more than once about NASA’s workforce struggles. He’s also a big fan of SLS. Never mind how uninspiring the SLS is.

Anyone watching this mornings Starlink launch the launch director stated during the terminal count "Time to let the American Broomstick fly and lets hear that sound of freedom"

Nice little dig at Rogozin's rants of late.

To be fair, there is an element of cringe to it, but I do like the digs at Rogozin's childish outbursts.
In my opinion, it's not nearly as bad as when the launch director said "godspeed" to an empty New Shepard. (Empty as in no people. Just suborbital experiments).