Artemis is following in the footsteps of the 1960s Apollo Program with design concepts similar to that program, with one exception, NASA has added the Lunar Gateway, a waystation or mini International Space Station (ISS) in cislunar space that could serve a number of purposes.
The original voyage to the Moon involved the Saturn V rocket, Apollo Command and Service Module, and a Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) with a descent and ascent stage. The Command and Service Module remained in lunar orbit with the detached LEM descending to the surface and then returning to orbit and rendezvous.
The justification of the Lunar Gateway has many arguing for it. The idea of a permanent mini-ISS well beyond Earth orbit has its proponents who see it as a place to practice deeper space science, a way to study long-term human exposure beyond low-Earth orbit (something we have yet to do), and as a resupply and assembly centre for missions to the Moon and beyond to the asteroids and Mars. These are all very justifiable reasons for building and maintaining the Gateway for Artemis and other future tasks.
Then there is the military aspect of building the Gateway. If it were solely a United States project (which it appears it is not since Canada, Japan, and the European Space Agency appear to be very much involved) then occupying the high ground of space for America’s Space Force would have strategic appeal. Sitting some 320,000 kilometers (200,000 miles) above the Earth would give the American military a view from the planet’s surface to all satellites in orbit.
But there are others who are detractors who see the Gateway as a make-work project for U.S. space and defense contractors, throwing billion-dollar bones to companies already feeding at NASA’s tranche of funding from the U.S. Congress. To-date NASA has received less than $500 million for the Gateway project and the Artemis back to the Moon deadline of 2024 is less than five years away. Congress will have to authorize many billions of dollars more for the entire program and that doesn’t seem to be on the minds of most in Washington, D.C.
The Boeing proposal to build a lunar lander brings up further questions about the need for a Lunar Gateway. The lander proposed goes by the name Human Lander System or HLS. Boeing would use its rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), to deliver the HLS in a single launch to lunar orbit and then down to the surface and back. Boeing calls it the “Fewest Steps to the Moon” approach to minimize mission complexity and create the most direct path to a successful landing. Boeing noted that the HLS could dock with the Gateway or directly with the Orion Command Module (the successor to the Apollo Command Module). It is this latter ability that makes the Gateway appear redundant.
Should SLS continue to be the funding boondoggle it appears to be and should continue to fail to meet milestones, then Boeing’s proposal will prove to be unfeasible. For SpaceX and Blue Origin, who both have launch capacity either in planning or already built that could achieve a return to the Moon agenda, the failure of Boeing would not necessarily end the idea of fewer steps which would eliminate the Gateway. SpaceX’s Starship wouldn’t need the Gateway or a Lander. And Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket and Blue Moon lunar lander can likely achieve the same without a Gateway.
So why the Gateway has become a NASA must-have?
It has its roots in an idea first proposed by Werner von Braun, the brain behind America’s space program. Von Braun shared the idea of the Gateway with an American television audience back in 1955 in a Disney-produced series on the human exploration of space. At the time viewers saw animations of low-Earth and lunar-orbiting space stations permanently inhabited, and passenger shuttles traveling between the two and coming from Earth to the Moon and back. Von Braun’s imagination took the television audience on a journey that went even beyond the Moon anticipating a future voyage to Mars and the other planets of the Solar System. There must have been a lot of nascent NASA-bound youth watching the program because it appears that Disney Musketeers are now driving the future vision of NASA. Artemis is the first step. And recently NASA talked about human missions to Mars by the mid 2030s. Much of this agenda appears driven by NASA Administrator, Jim Bridenstine, a political appointee of Donald Trump, who has no engineering or space science background.
What can I say? “Little boys and their dreams” are driving the NASA agenda these days down roads that may not need to be traveled, nor money needlessly spent.
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Rockets are a Chinese invention with reference to them as useful for both military and celebratory purposes. The Chinese defended themselves against the 13th century Mongol invasion using rockets with little effect. Through trans-Asian trade, rockets were introduced to Europe in the 14th century. Rockets primarily were powered arrows at this time. In the 19th century the British Congreve rockets inspired Francis Scott Key in his writing of “The Star Spangled Banner,” the American national anthem. Rockets were used in whaling to enhance the power and distance harpoons could travel. Rockets attached to safety lines were used to reach ships in distress so that they could be towed to safety. The Katyusha rockets of World War II were the 20th century equivalent of the British Congreve rocket.
But the rockets that were to launch humans into Outer Space did not use the technology inspired originally by Chinese invention. In 1903, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a Russian school teacher, proposed liquid propellants as a rocket fuel because of the potential increase in exhaust velocity to drive rockets farther. In his writing Tsiolkovsky laid the theoretical groundwork for the rockets of Robert Goddard, an American, who built the first liquid-fueled rocket and launched it successfully. It didn’t go far but the technology he demonstrated became the basis for Germany’s emergence as the leader in modern rocketry.
Before World War II rocket clubs popped up throughout Europe, Japan and the United States. Rocket hobbyists were popular in Germany inspirted by the writings of Dr. Hermann Oberth, a Hungarian-born German, who wrote about rocket travel beyond Earth. An inspired Werner von Braun in 1930 began experimenting, building and firing liquid-fueled rockets built on Goddard’s designs. Von Braun eventually became the leader of the German rocket program that created the A-4, the rocket known to us as the V-2. The A-4 stood 14 meters in height (46 feet), burned alcohol combined with liquid oxygen, and could launch a 750 kg, (1,650 pound) payload. It had a range of 360 kilometers (225 miles). Several thousand A-4s with attached warheads were constructed and launched against British, French and Belgian targets from 1944 to early 1945 causing considerable destruction.
With the end of World War II both the United States and Soviet Union took an interest in the weapon systems designed by Germany. German scientists, remaining inventory of A-4 rockets, and the engineering tools and technology were spirited out of the country. The race to exploit and enhance this technology for war and science had begun.
Machines Enter Outer Space, Humans Soon Follow
Both the United States and Soviet Union assembled and test-fired the remaining inventory of A-4 rockets. Then they began building their own largely for war purposes. The dream of using rockets to put machines and humans into outer space seemed like an afterthought.
Exploration of near-Earth space soon followed with the launch of Sputnik, in October, 1957, the first artificial satellite placed in orbit. Weighing 84 kilograms (183 lbs.), Sputnik’s launch vehicle was the R-7. R-7 technology directly evolved from the A-4. It burned kerosene and liquid oxygen. Today’s Russian space program continues to use the R-7.
To get to orbit rocket technology needed to achieve escape velocity. That meant building rockets with more power. More power required a larger amount of fuel. Both the Americans and Soviets approached this by developing multiple-staged rockets. With multiple staging a rocket could achieve orbit without carrying around any extra weight in the form of empty rocket casings. The approach to multi-staging, however differed dramatically. The Americans chose to build multi-stage rockets in a vertical-stack configuration. The Soviets built multi-stage rockets by strapping together each rocket. In the picture below you can see how the two designs differ. In the short-term the Soviet design made it possible to develop heavier lift capacity. The R-7 had three times the thrust and payload capacity of any of the American rockets. With limited thrust and capable of delivering only small payloads American satellite requirements stimulated integrated circuit development and the technology behind modern computing. But at the beginning of the Space Age, this need for light and small was not seen as an advantage.
In space the Soviets surged ahead with heavy launch capacity and a program aimed at being first in all the key categories;
For the American program the achievements were far more modest, the successful launch of a satellite, Explorer 1, January 31, 1958. Pioneer 4, launched in March 3, 1959, became the first American satellite to pass the Moon and achieve solar orbit. On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American to achieve suborbital flight. And on February 20, 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth.
The components for reasonably reliable rocket technology made these advances possible. All that was left was the imagination and determination of a government to set an achievement goal. That happened when President John F. Kennedy established a goal of landing a human on the Moon before 1970.
In our next blog we will look at the technology that created to achieve the Lunar landing of Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin in Apollo 11.
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