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]]>So, let’s begin.
When NASA selected SpaceX’s HLS (Human Landing System), a modified version of the company’s Starship, the goal was to meet the 2025 date for the Artemis III mission to return humans to the lunar surface. With 2025 coming to an end, we are not even close to meeting that milestone. Why? One of the reasons is delays to the Artemis II mission, which doesn’t involve SpaceX. Artemis II was supposed to fly in 2024, but now has a tentative launch date sometime in February 2026. Artemis II involves the Space Launch System (SLS), another NASA Boeing boondoggle that has been delayed for years and gone significantly over budget.
Using the excuse of the Artemis II mission delay, however, makes little sense when addressing SpaceX’s Starship program to date. Starship is well behind schedule to meet the Artemis Program’s goals. The last two Starship launches have worked out many of the spacecraft’s bugs. Sometime in 2026, a new version of the Starship will be launched, and if successful, will be followed by additional demonstration launches into low-Earth orbit where objectives for the Artemis III mission will be tested and hopefully perfected.
I have previously described the gamble NASA made in choosing SpaceX for Artemis III. Now, with the long delays, the agency leadership is getting cold feet about SpaceX. Sean Duffy, the current Secretary of Transportation and interim head of NASA, has decided to stir the pot, seeking alternative suppliers to get Artemis III to the lunar surface before China’s stated goal to do the same by 2030. He described opening the contract up to an accelerated process while inviting Blue Origin, a SpaceX competitor with a landing system being built for Artemis V, to take a shot.
Blue Origin is building two landers for NASA, Mark 1 and 2. Mark 1 is near completion for uncrewed, supply missions to the lunar surface. Mark 2, a much larger version, is the human landing system for Artemis V. Can Blue Origin modify Mark 1 to carry humans to the lunar surface? Duffy wants an all-in crash program to develop it as an alternative to SpaceX’s HLS. Mark 1 would more closely resemble the LEM of the Apollo Program.
I don’t know if Duffy had anyone else to turn to if SpaceX fails to deliver. In response to Duffy’s opening of the contract, SpaceX has fired back, confirming it would have Starship back on track in 2026 with the HLS finished and ready for deployment. Exact timing states SpaceX will be dependent upon the upcoming new Starship’s low-Earth orbit test flights.
NASA’s return to the Moon looks to be in trouble.
Tiangong, the Chinese equivalent of the International Space Station, currently has a crew of six on board. The problem is that there should only be three. Why? A new crew complement recently arrived on Tiangong to relieve its three residents, who were to return to Earth using Shenzhou, China’s crew capsule. Hours before they were to depart, however, a piece of space junk struck the capsule. The status of the capsule’s viability for the return to Earth remains in question.
If Shenzhou cannot be repaired, then China’s Manned Space Agency (CMSA) will have to do one of two things. Either use the capsule that brought the new crew to Tiangong, or send up an empty spacecraft to replace the one already damaged.
Can Tiangong handle the needs of six versus its normal complement of three? When China designed the space station, it created sufficient life support and workspace for six. Cargo spacecraft can continue to supply Tiangong as CMSA determines how to address the current challenge.
The problem of accumulated space junk is a growing reality. With the present pace of launches from Earth, low-Earth orbit is getting crowded. The estimated number of space junk objects stands now at over 50,000 pieces larger than a softball, and millions of smaller fragments, all travelling at speeds of 7 kilometres (4.34 miles) per second.
For comparison, a high-calibre rifle can fire a bullet at maximum speeds of 1.2 km/s (0.75 m/s). At that speed, the projectile can penetrate metal, concrete and cause catastrophic failure to structural components. Now imagine that bullet travelling 5.8 times faster. That amount of kinetic energy upon impact would punch large holes in any object it encounters, including a spacecraft. In addition, the impact would release secondary debris travelling at high speed to cause a collision cascade, and the Kessler Syndrome, the threat that space debris strikes would eventually make low-Earth orbit space uninhabitable, once considered theoretical but now closer to reality.
Scientists at Rosatom in Troitsk, Russia, recently revealed a working prototype plasma propulsion engine. Deployed in space, the engine could achieve speeds of 100 kilometres (62 miles) per second. Compare that to chemical rockets with speeds ranging from 1.5 to 12 km/s (0.95 to 7.5 m/s). The higher range is needed to achieve escape velocity from Earth’s gravity and represents the upper performance limit of chemical propulsion systems.
Plasma propulsion is similar to ion thrusters but much more powerful. When NASA launched Dawn to Vesta and Ceres in the Asteroid Belt, it used chemical rockets to get to space and, after leaving Earth’s orbit, deployed ion thrusters that over time accumulated speed to achieve an average of 11 km/s (approximately 7 m/s) with a top speed of 31 km/s (19.2 m/s). The power to drive Dawn’s ion thrusters came from its very large solar panels. Xenon was the propellant carried as part of the payload. More than half was dispensed in getting Dawn from Earth to Ceres.
The Russian plasma propulsion engine uses hydrogen as its propellant. Hydrogen is far more abundant than Xenon gas. The engine generates 300 kilowatts during operation. That means solar panels would be considered insufficient. Hence, the power source is a small nuclear reactor that will drive a turbine and generator.
What are the implications of using plasma propulsion to get to Mars? At its closest approach, Mars lies 54.6 million km away. On average, Mars is 225 million km away. At its furthest, it is 401 million km. Travelling at 100 km/s, that means, once deployed, a plasma propulsion spaceship could travel 8.6 million km (5.3 million miles) per day. A trip to Mars when the Red Planet is closest could theoretically take 6.3 days and when furthest, 46 days. Averaged out, plasma propulsion travel to Mars would take less than 30 days. Compare that to chemical propulsion, with timelines measured between 6 and 9 months.
So far, the Russian engine has operated continuously for 2,400 hours, more than enough time to make it to Mars. The unavoidable question is, can Russia continue to support and invest in the technology, considering the increasing financial strain caused by the conflict with Ukraine? If it can, a flight-ready engine demonstrator powered by a nuclear reactor could be operational by 2030.
Can another national space agency or commercial operator duplicate or acquire the technology? Possibly, because a plasma propulsion system would fundamentally change how we humans travel beyond Earth in the 21st century.
If all goes as planned on Sunday, November 9, 2025, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket will launch NASA’s ESCAPADE, a mission to Mars involving two spacecraft. ESCAPADE is to map the near-space environment of Mars, including its magnetic fields and ionosphere. Our understanding to date is that Mars lacks a magnetic field similar to Earth’s. It is believed that this was not always the case and that something happened to the Martian core over 4 billion years ago that caused the magnetic field to switch off. Only a localized southern hemispheric field remains. This overall lack explains why Mars has lost most of its atmosphere to space.
As interesting as ESCAPADE will be, the New Glenn launch represents a change in the status quo of commercial space operations. This will be New Glenn’s second flight and first with a paying customer. The first was in January of this year. The reusable first stage was not recovered in that flight. In this second flight, Blue Origin hopes to land the booster for reuse. This will make it the third commercial space operator to attain partial reusability. SpaceX and Rocket Lab are the others.
New Glenn can lift 45 tons to low-Earth orbit. Its reusable first stage means launch costs can dramatically decrease. Larger capacity than Rocket Lab, it represents a true competitor for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy
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]]>Vulcan, also known as the Vulcan Centaur, uses the BE-4 engines developed by Blue Origin for its first stage. Its second stage is the Centaur rocket previously used on Atlas V launches. First conceived in 2015, it has taken a long time to get to certification for use by the U.S. Space Force. ULA plans to use the Vulcan as its primary launch vehicle going forward.
Is Vulcan as reusable as the Falcon 9? Not at present and likely for the foreseeable future. ULA has a different reusability strategy than SpaceX. Whereas SpaceX recovers the entire first stage of Falcon 9 launches, ULA is testing what it calls a SMART reuse system to recover and reuse the BE-4 engines, which the company states represents two-thirds of the first stage booster cost.
SMART is designed to detach the BE-4 engines after first-stage separation and protect them with an inflatable heat shield and parachute system for ocean recovery. No date for the first SMART test has been announced. ULA notes that SMART is the key to the company reducing its launch costs and increasing launch frequency.
Meanwhile, as of August 13, 2025, SpaceX has launched 525 Falcon 9s and 11 of the larger Falcon Heavy. Of these, 498 were designed for booster recovery, with SpaceX succeeding 485 times. One Falcon 9 booster has flown 29 times. Booster recovery and refurbishment improvements continue to drive down launch costs and increase the turnaround to accelerate launch frequency. In 2025, SpaceX launched Falcon 9s 96 times, with its likely year-end total between 160 and 170. Refurbishment between launches is down to 9 days with relaunches every 14.
ULA’s hopes to achieve a similar level of success remain far from reality. The current schedule calls for five more launches of Vulcan and Atlas V boosters this year, with plans to launch twice monthly in 2026 and 2027.
Where ULA hopes to have a competitive edge in the future is with its second stage Centaur. The company plans to use the Centaur as a space tug for servicing satellites and is working with Blue Origin to develop an orbital refuelling demo mission for the U.S. Space Force sometime in 2026.
Another competitor is also pushing its way into the field. It is Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket which has been designed for booster reusability and second-stage tug services. Because New Glenn uses BE-4 engines on its booster stage, it appears that an alliance may be shaping up with ULA, although both companies are working on parallel technologies to compete with SpaceX’s launch business.
Both companies have their work cut out for them. SpaceX currently charges US$67 million for each Falcon 9 launch, with current costs between $15 and 17 million. The company also offers a Falcon 9 satellite ride-share program, charging as little as $325,000 for 50-kilogram (120-pound) and cubesat payloads.
This is a business that ULA wants but cannot get with its current costs. The Atlas V launch price varies from $109 to 153 million. Vulcan pricing is currently at an estimated $100 million. ULA’s costs per rocket vary from $70 to 90 million. That’s why without reusability, ULA cannot compete with SpaceX. Only the legacy relationships it has with NASA, the U.S. Space Force and other branches of the Department of Defence represent the way the company can continue to be in the launch business. Reusability will change this.
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]]>Wordsworth has modelled early Mars as well as studied the current state of the planet, noting that increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere and other greenhouse gases, a greenhouse effect could be renewed.
Such a project would require considerable geoengineering sleight of hand. One way this could be accomplished would involve placing highly reflective satellites in orbit to target sunlight on Mars’ polar ice caps. The Martian ice caps contain frozen CO2 and water. Gasification of the CO2 would increase atmospheric density and air pressure and create the beginnings of a greenhouse effect. The initial warming would help to melt water elsewhere on Mars, just beneath the surface. This would add water vapour, a potent greenhouse gas, to the atmosphere and stimulate a Martian water cycle.
Wordsworth describes the habitability project as possible first in the equatorial regions of the planet. He notes that Martian soil could be remediated by removing perchlorate using bioengineered bacteria, which would thrive in the CO2 atmosphere. Perchlorate has been detected in Martian soils since the first Viking landers in 1976. Get the perchlorate out, and plants can begin to grow in Martian soils. We are already demonstrating that feasibility here on Earth in experiments that simulate Martian conditions. As plants do their thing in the soil of the Red Planet, they will expel oxygen and further alter the Martian atmosphere. These first plants would grow in sealed domes, greenhouse oases, that might eventually be future homes for humans and other Earth life colonists. How long would this Martian makeover take? Wordsworth estimates no more than two Earth centuries.
It sounds like science fiction. Could it become a reality? Wordsworth has his backers in people like SpaceX’s Elon Musk, President Donald Trump, and the soon-to-be confirmed new head of NASA, Jared Isaacman, a private astronaut who has funded and flown two missions into near-Earth orbit. If it were to happen, however, reliably getting to and from Mars, delivering sufficient payloads of materials and robots would be essential.
In the heady days after Trump was elected to his second term, SpaceX and some at NASA started talking about optimal launch to Mars in 2026 and 2028. SpaceX announced ambitions to send several Starships to the Red Planet and begin using Martian local resources (in-situ resource utilization or ISRU) to prepare the planet for its first human colonists by 2030.
Based on the latest Starship launch failure this week, it is increasingly difficult to believe that these plans are no more than a pipe dream. SpaceX has yet to prove the Starship technology can fly to orbit and do it repeatedly. The first booster reuse failed, and the Starship that would be the vehicle to go to and from Mars also blew up shortly after reaching low-Earth orbit. Nobody is going to Mars, let alone the Moon, on SpaceX technology based on the company’s present performance.
Trump has talked about American astronauts on Mars by the early 2030s. He has waxed about the 2030s as being the pivotal decade for space ambitions rivalling those in the 1960s, with the race to the Moon. The current trajectory of American technology for humans going to Mars, however, is far from perfected. The Starship failure has put even the lesser ambition of the Artemis Program to land humans on the Moon in 2027 in jeopardy, because the first Human Landing System (HLS) to take crews to the surface is based on Starship, so far, an unreliable choice.
Meanwhile, NASA continues to work on assembling the Space Launch System (SLS), the successor rocket to the Saturn V, and the Orion capsule, the successor to Apollo, with the Artemis II circumlunar mission scheduled for sometime in 2026. That mission doesn’t land on the Moon, so the lack of the HLS is not an issue. The HLS, however, will need to be a proven landing platform before the 2027 planned Artemis III landing on the Moon. If not, NASA will have to consider contingency plans, possibly using Blue Origin’s lander under development, or move the mission date to later in the decade.
In any case, NASA hanging its hat on SpaceX technology is making flying to Mars a pipe dream for now. The Wordsworth terraforming cannot begin without a proper means of reliable transit between the two planets. Getting to Mars with SpaceX won’t happen without dramatic improvements to the latter’s technology, and we are halfway through this decade, which means the timelines are starting to look very iffy.
I don’t know why NASA isn’t fast-tracking nuclear rocket propulsion instead. To me, the chemical rocket route has too many challenges when talking about missions to and from Mars. Several nuclear options can be developed that would be better than relying on the chemical rockets that began the Space Age. Nuclear rockets would also make it to Mars much faster, cutting down transit time between the two worlds by more than half.
That’s why people on Mars by 2030 and an established American presence on the Red Planet sometime in the 2030s based on SpaceX technology and NASA systems like the SLS and Orion are no more than a Trump-Musk fantasy.
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]]>Before considering sending humans to Mars, NASA decided a return to the Moon would be a testbed for developing the technologies needed to get to Mars. The Artemis Program was seen as a stepping stone. Numerous delays have beset Artemis, however, from the beginning.
It required NASA to rebuild its integrated launch system technology that it formerly used for the Apollo Program. The result is the Space Launch System (SLS), a throwaway behemoth of a rocket that bears a resemblance to the Saturn V of the Apollo Program. The same is true of the Orion spaceship, a larger version of the Apollo space capsule.
In the first test of the technology, the Artemis I mission, an early version of the SLS was used to launch Orion beyond the Moon before it returned to an ocean landing on Earth. Examination of the spaceship indicated unexpected heat shield pitting requiring re-engineering that has delayed Artemis II by two years. The escalating mission costs of the entire program will reach $93 billion by the end of 2025.
When Artemis III returns astronauts to the Moon’s surface sometime in 2027, saner heads at the Agency may finally intervene to consider going to cheaper competing technologies from commercial operators. The solutions for subsequent Moon voyages may lie with NASA’s current commercial partners like SpaceX and Blue Origin. Both are already contracted to build Moon landers. Both have powerful reusable rocket technology that could end the need for the SLS.
In Part 1, we described the Mars agenda for SpaceX. The Starship is being designed for interplanetary travel. It is reconfigurable as the upcoming HLS version will show. The HLS will land on the Moon where there is no atmosphere. Starships have already landed on Earth in test flights. When SpaceX sends several Starships to Mars as it intends in the next few years, handling landings on the Red Planet should become feasible and eventually routine. But none of this answers the question of how safe the journey will be when humans fly to Mars and stay on its surface for protracted lengths.
Speaking of the Martian surface, when Perseverance was conceived, one of its tasks in exploring the Jezzero Crater was to dig up and scrape samples for future scientific examination. In a recent news release, a NASA spokesperson described the science of these samples as ground-breaking. Right now, however, they are packed in vials lying on the surface where Perseverance left them waiting to be picked up.
That was the purpose of the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, to gather those samples and bring them back to Earth in 2033. The technology to do this was developed in cooperation with the European Space Agency (ESA). MSR project costs skyrocketed so NASA decided to delay the project and seek a less expensive way to get the Perseverance samples back.
The two options NASA is currently considering include:
For both cases, if NASA sticks to a crewed mission happening in 2035, MSR’s samples may become redundant, or if the crewed mission lands near the Jezzero Crater site, the astronauts could pick up the samples themselves.
Favourable launch windows determine when to send missions to Mars. How do you calculate these? The mathematics of two objects moving around the Sun at different speeds and on different trajectories determines when is the best time to launch.
It turns out to be approximately every 26 Earth months when everything aligns. This happens because while Earth orbits the Sun every 365.25 days, Mars orbits it every 1.9 Earth years. That means a spacecraft launched from Earth has to target a location where Mars will be and not where it is at the time of launch. The launch window periodic alignment allows for a direct trajectory.
Perseverance was launched in 2020 and took a direct trajectory to Mars. Its trip took 204 Earth days with an initial launch speed of just under 40,000 kilometres per hour (24,600 miles per hour) and after an interplanetary insertion burn an average cruising speed of 100,260 kph (62,300 mph) over the 470 million kilometres (292 million miles) trip.
NASA’s Odyssey or SpaceX’s Starship could duplicate the Perseverance fast trajectory. NASA, however, doesn’t plan for human spaceflight to Mars using the Perseverance voyage model. Instead, it plans for voyages lasting nine months and stays on the surface between 90 and 500 days to align favourable launch periods to return to Earth.
Think about the burden of onboard resources missions of this duration require lasting well over three Earth years. This isn’t a three-day journey to the Moon and a two-week stay before coming home. But doing the Moon could be good preparation for the leap to Mars although some say not.
The Apollo Program made six voyages of discovery to the Moon. Do we need to go back? Ask Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, and he will say no. He thinks the current Artemis Program is largely misdirection. Musk sees getting to Mars as essential to make humans an interplanetary species. Is he right?
Does the U.S. need to be spending $93 billion by the end of this year chasing a return to the Moon? Musk doesn’t think so and the new Trump-nominated NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, may agree.
I disagree with Musk but for other reasons. I have issues with the entire human space program going to places with deep gravity wells rather than building a space infrastructure of free-floating colonies using materials mined from captured or visited asteroids. This is a strategy that eliminates the burden of dealing with launch thrust requirements to escape bodies like Mars.
But since we are going down the route of making celestial bodies our destinations for the foreseeable space future, then the Moon appears to be the perfect place to test the technologies we need. The Moon as a test bed is only three days from Earth. If something goes wrong on Mars, without self-sufficiency, there is no nearby remedy.
Several key technologies need to be perfected to make living on the Moon viable. Lunar solutions will not be enough for Mars. The journey from the Earth to the Moon is a puddle jump compared to the one to Mars.
Protecting a crew from space threats over three days isn’t the same as keeping them healthy and alive for a six to nine-month voyage.
What are the technologies that need to be developed or perfected for the Martian project? Here are the ones that immediately come to mind:
So there you have it! There’s a lot of homework between now and those targeted dates mentioned in Part 1. Keeping all the irons in the fire for the duration and raising funds from public and private sources will be critical to making the interplanetary dream come true.
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]]>As the return of humans to the Moon’s surface is pushed back further in this decade, timelines on NASA projects are beginning to make little sense. Three that immediately come to mind are:
Here are NASA’s current estimated timelines:
For the Moon:
2026 Artemis II will circumnavigate the Moon. This mission was originally planned for 2024 but now is delayed.
2027 Artemis III will land astronauts on the Moon. The mission involves the Space Launch System (SLS) as the booster mated to the Orion capsule which will voyage to lunar rendezvous with a SpaceX-modified Starship called the HLS. The astronauts will transfer to the HLS to descend to the lunar surface and then return to Orion for the voyage back to Earth. The HLS will remain parked in lunar orbit for the next Artemis mission.
2028 Artemis IV adds another NASA build, the Lunar Gateway, a mini-space station that will serve as temporary quarters for astronauts and a docking station for future lunar missions. SpaceX’s HLS will dock with the Gateway once it is in orbit. The crew of Orion will transfer through the Gateway to the HLS and descend to the lunar surface.
2030 Artemis V will be a repeat performance with likely a longer stay on the lunar surface to begin establishing the infrastructure for a permanent lunar habitat.
2031 Artemis VI will be a repeat with additional infrastructure put in place for a habitat that can be continually occupied.
For Mars:
2033 The Perseverance rover has been collecting samples that NASA wants to bring back to Earth for study. This was to be the original MSR mission date which because of budget constraints is being reworked with two alternative options under consideration and, as a result, an altered timeline.
2035-38 NASA’s long-announced planned date for a three-year plus crewed expedition going to and returning from Mars. The proposed stay varies, from 90 to 500 Earth days based on a favourable window for return.
2040 This is the MSR date based on two revised mission plans currently under consideration. There is still value in Perseverance samples since they have been collected from the Jezzero Crater with its many features indicating it was once a watery place. The MSR collection may arrive later than returning astronauts with samples they bring back.
Several commercial partners have worked with NASA since the Agency was first established. Boeing is the prime contractor for the SLS. Lockheed Martin is the prime for the Orion capsule. The European Space Agency (ESA) and its commercial contractors have built the European Space Module (ESM) attached to Orion. The ESM provides Orion with its primary propulsion systems, solar panels for power and life support systems for the crew.
Three space partners have built rocket systems of their own. These include the United Launch Alliance (ULA is a Boeing Lockheed Martin partnership), SpaceX and Blue Origin.
One of the ULA partners, Boeing, has built the Starliner, a space taxi designed to deliver crews to the International Space Station (ISS). It has problems.
SpaceX has developed the Dragon spacecraft as an ISS taxi and for other uses. An extended version of it will be used to de-orbit the ISS after 2030.
The third space partner is Blue Origin whose BE-4 engines power ULA’s Vulcan rocket. Its New Shepard suborbital rocket has had several successful crewed flights to the edge of space. It recently launched the New Glenn rocket designed to deliver payloads to orbit, the Moon, and beyond.
Boeing, a ULA partner, is currently the prime contractor for the SLS, the Artemis launch vehicle.
Founded by Elon Musk, SpaceX’s mission has from the outset been about making humans a multi-planetary species.
Blue Origin wants to make the Moon and the orbiting spaces above Earth the manufacturing hub of Earth while turning the planet into a green oasis.
SpaceX and Blue Origin both are involved in contracts with NASA. They also have their plans for the Moon and Mars. Here are the timelines.
For the Moon:
2027 NASA has contracted SpaceX to deliver a version of its Starship, the Human Landing System (HLS) for use in the Artemis III and IV lunar missions.
2030 NASA has contracted Blue Origin to deliver the Blue Moon Landing System for the Artemis V lunar mission.
2033 Blue Origin plans to land a lunar habitat on the Moon to establish a permanent human presence there. Who will be its occupants?
For Mars:
2026 SpaceX plans repeated Starship tests through 2025 to prove the design is reliable. When successful, SpaceX plans to launch 5 unmanned missions to Mars to demonstrate interplanetary transit and landing capability.
2028 – 29 During the next optimal Earth-Mars transit window, SpaceX plans to send a Starship with a human crew aboard to land on Mars. This would beat NASA’s plans by six years. If delayed, the mission would move to 2031-32. If the plan is to stay on Mars only for the duration of the same transit window, the expedition would visit for no more than 30 Earth days (A Martian day is approximately 30 minutes longer than an Earth day).
2040 – 50 Although SpaceX doesn’t mention details after its first successful Martian landing and return, it is likely crewed missions will follow throughout the 2030s spaced out every 24 to 26 months. The eventual goal is to deliver the tools, equipment and people to establish a permanent self-sustaining settlement by mid-century, and a city of a million by 2100.
The new Trump administration has nominated private astronaut, Jared Isaacman, to be NASA’s new administrator. Isaacman has led two private space missions using SpaceX systems and may favour using Starships to return astronauts to the Moon. He could cancel the SLS, Orion and the Lunar Gateway which would save the Agency billions of dollars. The timelines may alter as well if Starship becomes a proven and reliable technology for going to and from the Moon and then taking NASA astronauts to Mars.
The other factor not mentioned is a potential revival of the Space Race of the 1960s between the United States and the Soviet Union. After NASA landed astronauts on the Moon in 1969, a period of space cooperation began which remains to this day with Russia, the Soviet Union’s successor, a partner on the International Space Station. Elsewhere, Russia has its plans for the Moon which may include a partnership with China to establish a permanent lunar colony.
The next race for the U.S. to claim the high ground of space is no longer with the Russians. It is now with the Chinese. China has plans to put taikonauts on the Moon and eventually Mars. The Russians have their plans to put cosmonauts on the Moon. Together they can combine resources to overcome the deficiencies each has in their current space programs.
Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, has unveiled plans for a future lunar habitat by the end of this decade or in the early 2030s. China has a stated goal to be the dominant space country by 2050. Does that mean a permanent Chinese presence on the Moon and Mars? On the former, certainly. On the latter, not necessarily.
So there you have it. NASA and its partners have space ambitions. SpaceX is jockeying to get to Mars. Blue Origin wants to dominate the space between the Moon and Earth and change the world. NASA’s Isaacman has a challenge to make all of these various ambitions work together while saving money for the Agency, freeing up the program for scientific space exploration.
What’s left to be said? I will tell you in Part 2 where I describe some of the complexities of humans travelling through space to the Moon and Mars, and what solutions and inventions are needed to meet some of the remaining challenges for all of the above to succeed.
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]]>Starship stands 122 metres (over 400 feet) in height when stacked atop the super heavy booster. It is the largest rocket ever built, even bigger than NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) that the Agency intends to use to send astronauts back to the Moon. A version of Starship, the Human Landing System (HLS), is essential to NASA’s plans for the Artemis 4 flight that tentatively will launch sometime in 2026.
NASA considers these Starship test flights critical. SpaceX refers to the Starship upper stage as the Ship. For NASA it needs to demonstrate reusability and reliability not for Earth landings but for ferrying the astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface and back. It has to withstand near-vacuum conditions in space and repeat controlled landings and takeoffs from the lunar surface.
Today, the Ship flew its 58 minutes in low-Earth orbit and made a controlled re-entry to hit its intended target in the Indian Ocean. The heat shield held. The navigation control fins did their job through the hot plasma descent. The SpaceX Starlink satellite network broadcast live video throughout providing views we have never seen before whether produced by NASA or any other space agency. Camera-equipped buoys captured the landing on the Indian Ocean surface. The only flaw in the performance was the Ship exploding after landing. The explosion likely happened because of the combination of residual fuel on board the Ship, its still-hot surface and contact with seawater. There were no plans to recover the Ship for this test flight but what caused the fireball we all witnessed on camera is important for addressing reusability and durability.
If the Starship succeeds in meeting all its milestones, it will make all existing launch systems obsolete. Reusability and durability will be among its key differentiators. Payload capacity will be another. No longer will Low-Earth orbit (LEO) space be the preserve of government agencies.
NASA is playing a significant role in pushing the reusability agenda. It wants to become a tenant in LEO space with commercial operators building space stations it can use for ongoing research. The Ship can also drive down the cost of building LEO infrastructure.
Getting to LEO is very expensive today. The cost for the International Space Station (ISS) build totals $150 billion US. Transporting crews to and from it comes in at variable costs. On SpaceX’s Dragon capsules, each mission costs $287 million or $72 million per seat. Using Soyuz to get to and from the ISS comes in at a per-seat cost of $86 million. If Starliner becomes certified, its seat price will be $90 million.
Payload costs per kilogram today vary from a low of $1,500 on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy to a high of $19,000 on China’s Long March rocket. Russia’s Soyuz-2 rocket payload costs per kilogram run between $5,300 and $9,700. When the US Space Shuttle was first conceived the estimated cost to deliver payload was supposed to come in at $260 per kilogram. As costs spiralled the end price came in at $14,200, almost 55 times greater.
SpaceX has demonstrated partial reusability with its Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9 launches. The first stage of the Falcon 9 and non-core stages of the Falcon Heavy are reusable with some having flown more than 20 times. Today, Falcon 9 can deliver payloads to LEO for $2,720 per kilogram. With full reusability, the Ship may be able to bring costs down to under $1,000.
That $1,000 figure is still too much when you consider the mass of the ISS today at more than 362,000 kilograms. After 2030 when ISS is de-orbited, commercial space stations that replace it will be smaller. NASA is looking to use these commercial replacements for payload deliveries of up to 5,000 kilograms per launch and 2,000 kilograms per return flight.
At $1,000 the price per kilogram to build space infrastructure will remain uneconomical. SpaceX, however, has plans to drop the cost to orbit using the Ship not just for LEO flight, but also for making point-to-point suborbital deliveries on Earth. It aspires to reduce payload costs per kilogram on suborbital flights to $2.50 and on LEO flights with a reusability rate of 100 launches and landings at prices between $13 and $30 per kilogram. If you do the math, at $13 to $30, you could deploy the equivalent of the ISS for between $4.7 and $10.9 million. Now those are numbers commercial space operators would happily live with.
So when Starship took off on its fifth test flight yesterday, that’s what was riding on its demonstration, a future commercial space industry that now is possibly one step closer to reality.
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]]>Ask NASA how much time crews spend weekly on maintenance and you get a variety of answers. In a 2006 report, it said that crew members spent 1.8 hours daily on maintenance. A more recent answer noted that when the ISS is down to a complement of 3 crew members, 100 hours weekly is spent on maintenance. Divide that by 3 and then 7 and you get 4.75 hours daily.
Compare that to 160 hours spent weekly on doing scientific research and you can begin to see that the ISS, without significant refurbishment, will soon be like an old car. Do you continue to maintain it or replace it?
NASA and its ISS partners have faced several choices.
NASA is placing its bets on doing the last two options and in response to a deorbiting request for proposal selected SpaceX to do the job for $843 million. That’s right! To destroy the ISS. the U.S. will pay Elon Musk’s company nearly a billion US dollars.
The plan isn’t to use the SpaceX Starship to tow and direct the ISS in its plunge into the Southern Pacific Ocean far away from land. Instead, the commercial space company plans include a modified Dragon spacecraft with more horsepower to get the job done.
The vehicle is called the Dragon USDV. The acronym stands for United States Deorbit Vehicle. It will have an extended chassis or trunk which will carry 600% more propellant and feature 28 more Draco thrusters than the current 18 on Dragon today. The extension will be powered by a solar array and store up to 4 times the energy used for Dragon crew and resupply missions.
A Dragon USDV will launch probably using a Falcon Heavy to get it to the ISS. A Dragon crewed mission will shortly follow. The crew will prepare the station for deorbit and then depart. The ISS orbit will be allowed to degrade naturally until it reaches 330 kilometres (approximately 205 miles) above the Earth. The Dragon USDV will then fire up its thrusters to begin a controlled drop aimed at a 2,000-kilometre (1,200-mile) window in the Pacific. The Dragon USDV and most of the ISS will burn up. Some will stay intact with pieces as big as a car hitting the water.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t get it. Currently, the ISS costs $350 million annually with or without crews. That’s almost $500 million less than the deorbit project cost. Couldn’t the ISS use existing Dragon, Soyuz, Progress and Cygnus resupply and even Boeing Starliner modules to boost it to a higher orbit for mothballing at minimal cost make more sense? Then modules worth saving and other pieces of ISS infrastructure could be cannibalized for future space projects. Even if and when commercial station replacements get built and launched, couldn’t some use pieces of the ISS to speed up completion or enhance their projects?
Besides China’s current space station, Tiangong, what is the present state of planning for future low-Earth orbit habitats?
The Russians have been significant partners in the ISS. The war in Ukraine, however, has created a falling out between the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, NASA, and the European Space Agency (ESA). Roscosmos, therefore, has other plans, to build and launch a separate station the Russian Orbital Station (ROS).
The plan is to put this new low-Earth orbit station 400 kilometres above the planet in a near-polar orbit which will serve Russia better for surveying its terrain. The first of four modules is to be launched in 2027 subject to having the launch capability. The remainder will follow in staggered launches through to 2033. First crews will occupy the station as early as 2028. ROS is estimated to cost 608.9 billion rubles (USD 6.98 billion).
Does Russia have the means and money to achieve its plan for ROS? Russia has been challenged by a lack of launch capacity. Its Soyuz rockets can handle Soyuz-crewed modules and Progress resupply ships. But building a reliable successor to its Proton heavy-lift rockets has been fraught with challenges. Roscosmos has been working on the Angara A5 heavy-lift rocket for more than a decade. First launched in 2014, it has had three successes and one partial failure.
Then there is Russia’s belated departure date from the ISS. It keeps moving. When originally announced, Russia was to be gone by the end of 2024 or in 2025. Now it appears 2028 is the end date coinciding with the launch of the first ROS module.
I have previously written about Axiom Space in partnership with Thales Alenia. It has always claimed that it will be the first commercial space station operator, albeit it will do this by mating itself to the ISS to start with plans to separate later.
The completion and launch of its first module is scheduled for sometime in 2025. Beyond that, Axiom intends to add three more before the ISS is decommissioned in 2030 to decouple and operate as a destination for future crewed space missions.
The four modules planned include:
Orbital Reef is a joint space station project headed up by Blue Origin with Sierra Space, Boeing, Arizona State University, Genesis Engineering Solutions, Amazon Web Services and Supply Chain, and Redwire Space all partners. It is described as the first open-system architectured space station with the first modules to be deployed before 2030 when it will be operational in full as a replacement for the ISS.
The two latest milestones achieved in the designing of Orbital Reef is a successful test of its life support systems by NASA. This has been followed by a successful burst test this last week at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, of the Sierra Space-built LIFE habitat structure where crews will live and work when the station is deployed.
Starlab is a joint venture involving Voyager Space, Airbus and Northrop Grumman. It will be a continuously crewed space station that has achieved multiple milestones this year. Its target deployment date remains 2027.
Haven-1 is Vast Space’s entry into the commercial space station market. The first non-inhabitable module is to be followed by a crew-capable addition offering both micro and lunar artificial gravity environments. Vast has entered into a partnership with SpaceX for the launch of subsequent modules to create what will first be a Starship-class module followed by the Artificial Gravity Station, a space station that eventually will rival the ISS in size. It is designed to rotate around a central docking port.
Last April, Vast announced that the Haven-1 is to be equipped with a Starlink laser terminal to provide Gigabit per second connectivity from it to Earth for future occupants. If all goes well SpaceX will launch the first Haven-1 module on a Falcon9 in 2025.
Are there other commercial space station deployments on the horizon? More than likely there will be as commercial space station operations deploy and begin to turn a profit for companies that use these off-world facilities. We’ve only seen European and American entries in the commercial space so far. I suspect, however, that besides China and Russian national programs and private companies, we will see commercial partners from Japan, South Korea and India’s ISRO joining the space station race in the mid-2030s.
The proof of commercial space station success remains to be seen with the first launches scheduled for next year and several more to be deployed in stages before the end of the decade. Maybe then we can say goodbye to the pioneering station, the ISS that provided proof that humans could make a go of it inhabiting near-Earth space over long periods.
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]]>For NASA, both events had special meaning. Starliner gives the space agency a second domestic carrier to ferry crews to the ISS and in future, its successors. Starship means the Artemis Program may just get back on track with the hope of a lunar landing in 2026. A version of Starship is to be used as a lunar lander for the first crewed Moon landing since the end of the Apollo Program. It has to prove it is space-worthy.
Starliner has repeatedly seen launch postponements delaying its certification for more than four years. Starship, like so many Elon Musk promises, is also late in meeting its milestones. But the ambition for the latter is far more difficult to achieve. That’s what makes today’s flight a triumph for SpaceX
Starship mated to the Super Heavy booster achieved two goals today. First, the Super Heavy performed a controlled launch, separation, boost back and landing burn while softly settling into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The Super Heavy fired 32 of its 33 engines as it ascended. In the landing burn 12 of the 13 engines fired. The two misfires didn’t affect outcomes. Meanwhile, Starship saw all of its engines light and made it to space on a suborbital flight taking it over Africa to the Indian Ocean where it spectacularly re-entered the atmosphere putting on a light show as its heat shield slowly disintegrated on a flap visible to everyone watching on X, Musk’s social media app.
We all witnessed the intense heat of re-entry lighting up the insulating tiles of Starship’s heat shield and held our breaths as it descended. The flap’s skin began to disintegrate. Pieces broke off. One struck and cracked the camera lens through which we were all watching. The pictures were relayed to Earth over Musk’s Starlink network of telecommunications satellites. The Musk show continued with Starship doing its thing with the flip maneuver unique to it, followed by a landing burn and a slow vertical descent into the Indian Ocean off the coast of Australia.
Several repeat performances for both Starliner and Starship will be needed before NASA can be satisfied that the gamble taken after the Shuttle was retired in 2011 has paid off. Starship and the Super Heavy next have to demonstrate they can land and be reused. Those milestones could be achieved in the next four 2024 planned test flights.
Back in 2014, both Boeing and SpaceX were awarded contracts by NASA to build replacements for the Shuttle to launch crewed missions to the ISS. It has been ten years and Boeing may have finally made it to the show while SpaceX has perfected first stage and fairing reuse for its Falcon 9 rockets, and demonstrated reusability and versatility for its Dragon spacecraft for crew and resupply missions to the ISS.
Now SpaceX’s Falcon 9 successor, the Starship is looking like NASA has made another good bet for future lunar missions. My only nagging concern about NASA is its remaining commitment to the over-budget Space Launch System (SLS) when Starship could help the agency achieve all the goals of the Artemis Program at a far lower cost.
Musk has a dream of using Starship to send crewed missions to Mars and establish a permanent human presence on the Red Planet. He believes that humanity needs a safety net by becoming a multiplanetary species just in case an extinction event occurs here on Earth.
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]]>Sheldon went home and worked on the mathematics for launches and recoveries, sent his calculations by mail to NASA and waited for a response. None arrived so his father drove the family from their East Texas home to Houston and NASA headquarters to support his son. Sheldon with persistence was able to meet with the same NASA official who had visited his class and walked him through the math. The NASA official was both puzzled and impressed. In the last scene of the sitcom, years later, we see Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, reading Sheldon’s notes from his NASA visit and hiding them in a desk drawer. I thought this story would be a good preamble to what follows.
NASA has been developing space technology since its founding back in the Eisenhower administration of the late 1950s. Here we are, more than 70 years later and NASA rockets can take off but cannot land.
The Space Launch System (SLS), NASA’s replacement for the Saturn V of the Apollo Program era, is a throwaway rocket. The European Space Agency (ESA) which has been in the space launch business for many decades and is ready to assemble its latest “state-of-the-art” launcher, the Ariane 6, is also a throwaway. Russia, the successor to the Soviet Union, and the first country to launch a satellite into space, recently launched the Angara A5, its latest heavy-lift launcher. Guess what? It’s a throwaway too. Launch systems are expensive. They waste resources when they cannot be reused. What’s wrong with this picture?
Two private companies, SpaceX and Rocket Lab have been proving that reusability is feasible. Soon others will join them, companies like Blue Origin with its current suborbital reusable rocket, New Shepard, and the soon-to-be-launched New Glenn which will be fully reusable. Even the United Launch Alliance (ULA), a company NASA has relied on for launchers for decades, is working on a reusable launcher after just retiring its last Delta IV. ULA’s successor, the Vulcan Centaur will have recoverable components when it begins to fly.
NASA did go down the reusability track after Apollo with the Space Shuttle. It was supposed to be a low-cost way of going to space with quick turnarounds. The design was futuristic with the spacecraft looking like an airplane. To fly it required mounting it on the side of a non-reusable fuel tank with two solid rocket boosters attached. This was a major design flaw that exposed the shuttle to falling launch debris, a persistent danger. NASA lost 14 astronauts and two Space Shuttles during the 30 years of the program. Refurbishment remained expensive and the best turnaround between flights was 78 days.
Reusability remains a desirable goal for national space programs including:
Learning from the Space Shuttle design problem made NASA go back to the stacked design of the Saturn V era. That’s why the SLS eerily resembles its predecessor. But why reusability hasn’t been built into the technology for the first stage boggles my mind.
The Artemis 1 mission tested the SLS first stage and rocket boosters, the ICPS cryogenic propulsion stage, and the Orion capsule. The total cost of this throwaway was US $1.3 billion including the $107 million for the solid-state boosters leftover from the Shuttle Program.
The cost for subsequent Artemis missions has ballooned. Artemis 2 is scheduled for the fall of 2025 to fly four astronauts around the Moon. Artemis 3 will likely happen later than the 2026 date, probably 2027 or 2028. Each Artemis Program mission in current dollars comes with a $2.2 billion price tag just for the throwaway SLS rocket and its components. The Orion reusable spacecraft costs $1 billion. The ESA-built service module, a throwaway, costs $300 million. Ground system support is currently estimated to cost over $500 million per flight.
Meanwhile, NASA’s legacy technology built for reusability is now being shared with private companies. It is NASA technology adopted by SpaceX that allows Falcon 9 first stages to land with precision. Other design elements in the Falcon 9 are legacy NASA innovations as well. SpaceX has also been perfecting first-stage reusability to the point where the latest two Falcon 9 first stages have been flown 20 times and turnaround for reuse is taking as little as 21 days. To top it off it is NASA contracts and payments to SpaceX that have made it possible to fund much of its Falcon, Dragon and Starship development. Today, NASA launches crews to the multinational International Space Station (ISS) using Falcon 9 rockets and reusable Dragon spacecraft.
Another NASA-contracted company, Boeing, plans to join the space reusability fraternity with its Starliner spacecraft. Boeing describes the technology as 20th-century proven with 21st-century innovations. It will ride a ULA Atlas 5 non-reusable rocket to get to orbit.
When NASA stopped flying the Space Shuttle it had created the program to encourage commercial spacecraft development. Several companies were shortlisted. Boeing got the lion’s share of the money, $4.3 billion. SpaceX was given $2.5 billion. Today SpaceX flies four Dragon spacecraft on missions to the ISS as well as for private companies. It has 10 missions to ISS under its belt.
Boeing is four years late in its development of the Starliner and lists an inventory of three although only two will be operational for crewed missions to the ISS. It has flown two uncrewed missions over the last two years. The first had software issues and never made it to the ISS. The second got there. Hopefully, next week’s first crewed mission will meet expectations.
We may soon witness full reusability with the SpaceX Starship and Super Heavy booster. Its success will be a breakthrough milestone for future space exploration and a lunar and eventual Martian presence. Because NASA has plans with its Artemis Program to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon and calls this a stepping stone on the way to Mars.
The only way NASA’s ambition will be realized is with reusability. Otherwise, the dream is unaffordable. Designs like the SLS won’t cut it to support long-term lunar and Martian ambitions. These missions need fully reusable parts and the way NASA is going currently, the only thing that will be reusable will be its name painted on the side of the rockets and spacecraft that will fulfil the dream.
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]]>The SpaceX Starship has been made an integral part of the Artemis Program. It too is behind schedule which is not uncommon for the development of this type of technology. SpaceX builds and breaks to learn what works and what doesn’t. It is an iterative process that is different from NASA’s process.
Three demonstration flights of the SpaceX Starship are a case in point. Starship has yet to meet the challenge of becoming a reliable technology for getting to space and back. The latest flight was in March 2024. A Starship along with its Super Heavy booster performed nominally during launch and through separation. The Starship made it to space and orbit. In the end, however, the Super Heavy, designed to be reusable, failed at a controlled descent. Starship, as well, had problems during its re-entry and descent into the Indian Ocean. SpaceX noted that some things worked well and acknowledged some didn’t.
One that appears to have worked is a critical requirement for the Artemis Program in its effort to develop space infrastructure to support future lunar habitability. NASA’s agenda includes the building of a gas station in space. This would be a place or means for a spaceship to refuel.
Refuelling a car here on Earth is pretty simple. We take it for granted. That’s because the technology is well established with infrastructure and supply lines in place. What appears routine here on the ground doesn’t exist in space. Refuelling there is more complicated. NASA calls the fuel transfer technology it wants in place, On-orbit Cryogenic Fluid Management or CFM.
SpaceX was awarded the contract to demonstrate CFM in 2020. In this last Starship test flight, an intertank transfer was performed in orbit. The demonstration moved 10 tons of liquid oxygen from one tank to another on the Starship. This needs to be repeated using two Starships in a future mission planned for 2025. It will involve a rendezvous and docking of two Starships, a fuel transfer, and then a deorbit of both spaceships to land on Earth.
The March demonstration showed liquid propellant can be moved between two tanks in one ship, but not between two. Artemis will need CFM transfers that do the latter and handle numerous challenges including:
The Artemis 3 mission depends on CFM being successful. A version of the Starship called the Human Landing System (HLS) is to be fuelled this way during a demonstration flight to the Moon currently scheduled for late 2026. An uncrewed HLS will be fuelled in low-Earth orbit and then sent to the Moon where it will land and launch proving the technology works.
Artemis 3 will launch on the SLS with Orion and an astronaut crew on board. Orion will rendezvous with the HLS in lunar orbit before taking the lander to the Moon’s surface for a one-week stay before using the lander to get back to the Orion.
As Starship launches more demonstration flights, no doubt, SpaceX will repeat the intertank transfer demonstration to refine the performance of the technology. These future launches will correct performance defects from previous flights. The iterative process SpaceX uses is different than how NASA developed Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and the Space Shuttle. It has taken those who watch the pursuit of space some getting used to, but if the Falcon 9’s success is any measure of validation, the methodology appears to work.
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