54 International The Economist July 17th 2021
Gateway, which would orbit in the Moon’s
vicinity. At its simplest, all Artemis re
quires beyond what is already in develop
ment is a system for getting people in an
Orion orbiting in the vicinity of the Moon
down to the surface and back up again (see
diagram on previous page).
For nasato develop such a landing sys
tem itself would still be a pricey undertak
ing. But the space agency’s greatest
achievement over the past decade has been
demonstrating that it does not have to de
velop its spacecraft itself. After the last
space shuttles were retired, nasaasked
private companies to submit proposals for
new spacecraft to get first cargo and then
crews up to the iss. Various companies
won contracts under these schemes, most
notably SpaceX, the rocket company
founded by Elon Musk.
Grants, milestone payments made
when particular goals were achieved and
the promise of longterm contracts once
the vehicles were up to scratch allowed
SpaceX to develop the Crew Dragon space
craft, now used to ferry astronauts up to
the iss. The overall cost to nasaof develop
ing the Crew Dragon this way was $3.1bn:
that is only a little more than the total cost
of the most recent Mars rover mission.It’s lonely out in space
During the Trump administration nasade
cided that Artemis should take the same
approach to developing its Human Land
ing System (hls). Three proposals survived
the first round of bidding last year: one
from a “national team” led by Blue Origin,
one from a consortium led by Dynetics, an
American aerospace and computing con
tractor, and one from SpaceX. It was ex
pected that two of the three would receive
contracts to build systems, just as Boeing
and SpaceX had both received contracts to
develop capsules to take crew to the space
station (Boeing has yet to fly a crew in its
capsule, but will undertake a crewless test
flight later this month).
On April 16th, though, nasaawarded a
single contract worth $2.9bn to SpaceX,
saying it lacked the money to offer two.
Both Blue Origin and Dynetics challenged
the award, which is now being reviewed by
the Government Accountability Office; its
findings are expected on or before August
4th. Maria Cantwell, a senator from Blue
Origin’s home state of Washington, subse
quently sponsored an amendment to the
bill authorising nasa’s budget which re
quires the agency to issue a second hls
contract. The bill has passed the Senate,
but as yet has no counterpart in the House.
This will probably lead to delays. But
the competitive approach is the right one.
When nasabuilds its own spacecraft pric
es go sky high, not least because politicians
like to see federal money spent in their
home states. The slsis a case in point. Itsdevelopment costs, now sunk, have been
enormous; it is far too expensive for fre
quent flights. A private company could
have done the job much better—as SpaceX
is showing with the development of its
Starship launch system, similar in capacity
to the slsbut much more technically am
bitious. Its “Raptor” engines are of an ad
vanced design that no one has previously
managed to make practical. It is intended
to be entirely reusable.
Prototypes of the sleek, stainlesssteel
hulled Starship have been launching, land
ing and sometimes exploding at SpaceX’s
plant in Texas for months as the company
tests their new engines and their ability to
change their orientation in midair. The
next test flight will be the most ambitious
yet. It will see the first use of a “Super Hea
vy” booster to launch a Starship almost in
to orbit (it will in fact come down about
6,000km away in the ocean off Hawaii).
The 33 Raptors on the Super Heavy will gen
erate twice as much thrust as the first stage
of a Saturn V did. The eventual goal is for
the Super Heavies, like the first stages of
SpaceX’s Falcon boosters, to return and
make a vertical landing after sending their
Starships into orbit. There the Starships
will either launch satellites and return to
Earth or wait for a subsequent launch to re
fuel them before heading off to more dis
tant destinations.
The SpaceX hlsMoon lander is a ver
sion of such a Starship, and nasa’s selec
tion of it over its competitors is a vote of
confidence in the company’s scheme. If it
comes to fruition, it will outcompete the
slsby more or less every measure save the
employment of government contractors.
Blue Origin’s plans for a booster far larg
er than the petard with which Mr Bezos
will hoist himself next week are not yet as
far along. But Mr Bezos has money and de
termination, as well as friends in Washing
ton. America could have three boosters capable of supporting human missions to
the Moon, two private and one public, be
fore China has even one.
It is in such possibilities that the real
promise of Artemis lies. The Chinese Moon
programme is entirely a creature of gov
ernment. Although there is a nascent priv
ate space sector in the country, it is not yet
capable of anything so ambitious. (Nor is it
entirely clear that the government is; the
engines a booster big enough for Moon du
ty requires are far more sophisticated than
anything it has yet built.) In this, China’s
programme will resemble in form, if not in
scale, America’s huge, centralised Apollo
programme. One of the great ironies of the
first space race was that at the peak of its ef
forts to stop the Moon from turning com
munist America was devoting more than
4% of government spending to a 400,000
worker planned economy entirely run by
government officials. The stars look very different today
This time round, it is possible that America
will instead get to the Moon by supporting
the aspirations of brilliant and deter
mined—if sometimes petty—entrepre
neurs and harnessing the capabilities they
provide. It promises to be a more effective
mode of exploration. It could also be the
beginning of something more. While Mr
Musk dreams of his Starships taking set
tlers to Mars, Mr Bezos talks of using re
sources from the Moon to build new indus
tries in space (such as powergeneration,
asteroid mining or the production of exot
ic new materials). It is a vision shared by
Chinese space enthusiasts such as Lieu
tenantGeneral Zhang Yulin, who works in
a part of the People’s Liberation Army de
voted to space and cyberoperations. Its
realisation, should it come to pass, may of
fer a truly dramatic answertothe question
of which system can betterrespond to the
challenges of the future.n