In the fifty years since the first lunar landing, the bones of Apollo have been picked clean by the media, academics, and even critics, with nearly every rivet cataloged and evaluated. The race to the Moon was ambitious, captivating, and exhilarating, but epitomized a top-down government approach that ended human missions to deep space for at least five decades. The Apollo program was shaped and guided by government bodies, most directly NASA, coordinating the nation’s resources to achieve a national goal by a specific deadline. Private industry was crucial to the quest, but not determinative.
Five decades later, the environment has fundamentally changed, with space entrepreneurs and companies now seminal to America’s drive to send humans beyond Earth orbit. NASA increasingly recognizes the central and expanding role of the commercial sector, and public-private initiatives between NASA and commercial players have emerged as a favored model for sustained human movement into deep space.
BUDGETING TIME AND DOLLARS
Leveraging commercial space was a major theme throughout the National Space Exploration Campaign Report that outlined the nation’s drive to the Moon and Mars. The initial project proposed by NASA was the modular Lunar Orbiting Gateway (also known as the “Gateway”) to reside in a nearrectilinear halo orbit around the Moon. In early 2019, the U.S. space agency unveiled its original lunar landing architecture incorporating the Gateway and other elements. The proposed sequence of missions was coherent, if complex and protracted, and relied heavily upon the Block 1B Space Launch System (SLS), featuring the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS). The biennial mission cadence culminated in boots on the Moon by the end of the 2020s.
This decade-long campaign received a chilly reception from the National Space Council’s advisory group. “Personally, I think 2028 for humans on the Moon . . . just seems like it’s so far off,” said former shuttle commander Eileen Collins. Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt added, “We can do it sooner.” The tempo of the projected program, he noted, paled in comparison to Apollo. “I think of launching Saturn Vs every two months and you’re barely going to launch [the SLS] every two years.”
Already facing headwinds from the National Space Council, the initial architecture also ran up against the Trump Administration’s 2020 NASA budget proposal, which deferred work on the more powerful Block 1B SLS. Minus the EUS, the SLS is unable to lift multi-ton cargo (such as Gateway or lander elements) together with Orion. Instead, the budget blueprint focused on completing the “initial version of the SLS and supporting a reliable SLS and Orion annual flight cadence.” This language reflected a wish to finalize the oft-delayed Block 1 SLS as soon as possible. At the same time, the budget proposal promoted commercial launches of heavy payloads, including components of the Gateway, which “would be launched on competitively procured vehicles, complementing crew transport flights on the SLS and Orion.”