NASA's pricey mission to send U.S. back to moon faces technical challenges | 60 Minutes

A small robotic lander built by a private company and carrying a scientific payload for NASA landed near the Moon's south pole 11 days ago and quickly flipped on its side, yet it is the first American spacecraft to land on The Moon in more than 50 years later, NASA has a much more ambitious lunar program called EMIS, which aims to

send

people

back

to the Moon to establish an outpost at the South Pole and advance from there to Mars. We've seen a preview of Artemis here in 2021, but now there are major questions about the program's costs and its timeline in January NASA announced its new goal for a landing in late 2026, a year later than planned, but as We discover, even that may be unrealistic, the story will continue in a moment and take off from Aramus 1 when Artemis 1 rose. space in November 2022 was the beginning of a nearly flawless

mission

on its first test flight.

NASA's new Space Launch System rocket sent an empty Orion crew capsule on a flyby of the Moon at 1.4 million M before a perfect return to Earth. The upcoming Artemis 2 flight meant to carry four astronauts on a lunar flyby was supposed to launch this year and then a year later Artemis 3 would take the first woman and first person of color to the

moon

, it's not working out That way, I think so. It's safe to say without significant reductions in costs. Better cost controls. Best plan. The Sardus program in its current trajectory is not sustainable. George Scott is the acting inspector general of NASA.

He didn't let the performance fool him. It's been an important watchdog for over 5 years while NASA engineers have their heads in the stars, their job is to bring them

back

to Earth, especially when it comes to costs right now, we're estimating that for launch, the Artemis campaign will cost $4.2 billion per launch. per release, that's an incredible amount of money per release, a lot of that hardware will just end up in the ocean never to be used again. NASA's Inspector General says the costs of the EMIS program are simply unsustainable. Was he wrong? We do not necessarily agree with his conclusions, we feel that we have taken an affordable path to accomplish these

mission

s.

Jim Free is the associate administrator of NASA and is directly in charge of Artemis. We met him on the historic Launchpad 39b from where the Apollo and Artemis rockets have flown. We believe that the rocket we have is the best suited for the mission and, frankly, the only one in the world that can cruise to the Moon. Confirmation that the rocket's solid boosters have separated, but as George Scott said, most of the components of that SLS rocket end up in the ocean, are not reusable and with the goal of building an outpost on the

moon

, Artemis it's going to take a lot of those 42 billion rockets, it's going to take launch after launch after launch to get all of that there, yeah, so the number of launches.

It's discouraging, but it's hard to put people on the moon. That's something the United States sent Neil Armstrong and 11 other AST auts to the Moon half a century ago. That is beautiful. They reached the lunar surface aboard landers. We left it, we came and God willing. Since we'll be back owned and operated by NASA, you're taking a different approach this time than with Apollo. What's the difference this time? The difference is that we are buying it as a service. We're paying someone to shoot down our crews and take them, it's been an incredible year, someone is Elon Musk in 2021.

NASA signed a nearly $3 billion contract with his SpaceX to use their new Mega rocket starship as lunar lander for the first Artemis astronauts. It is by far the largest flying object of all time. SpaceX is preparing for its third Starship launch atop its massive super-heavy booster. The first two launches ended approximately the same way, as you can see, the super heavy booster just underwent an unscheduled rapid disassembly. An unscheduled quick disassembly. SpaceX speaks for us. The Starship rocket just exploded again and now they have seen some of the dangers of depending on SpaceX. We've seen some of the

challenges

they've had on Starship.

We need them to take the plunge several times to give us the confidence that we can. Put our crews there, but right now, as we sit here today, there is no way to get astronauts to the surface of the Moon because of these problems that SpaceX has faced because they haven't met the

technical

milestones, Spacex stated. The plan is to first put their Starship Lander into low Earth orbit and then launch 10 more Starship tankers to pump rocket fuel into the Lander in real Mak SciFi space before

send

ing it to meet the astronauts in lunar orbit and this has never been done. done before there have been small scale transfers in orbit, but not of this magnitude, it just sounds incredibly complicated, it's complicated, there's no doubt you don't do it.

Simply cast 10 times on a whim if it's never been done before. Chen's art is going to take longer than you think to do it and do it successfully and improve that technology before we trust putting humans in it. There is a long way to go. NASA's contract with SpaceX requires the company to conduct an unmanned lunar landing with Starship before attempting it. with astronauts on board, but NASA still says that the human mission can happen in 2 and A2 years and that seems like the time frame we are talking about, late 2026, seems ambitious to say the least, what we are doing is ambitious, but it's a big goal to have to make is that realistic goal.

I think it is. I think it is. Jim Free's optimism is based on Spacex's track record with its smaller Falcon rocket. Once he got the Falcon up and running, he showed that he can throw a lot of things. 96 times last year alone with commercial and government payloads, but so far Starship has yet to reach orbit, not even once, does that worry you? That will continue to push that timeline back even further, of course, which absolutely worries me because we need them to be released multiple times. SpaceX ignored our multiple requests for an interview or comment, but in an interview with the Daily Wire in January, Elon Musk said we hope to have the first humans on the Moon in less than 5 years.

My opinion is that we have a contract. with SpaceX saying they will launch our crew in late 2026, why does it really matter when we return to the Moon? Here's why China has said it plans to send its Tyona Nots to the Moon by the end of the decade. and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has publicly expressed concern, naturally I don't want China to get to the southern pool with humans first and then say this is ours, stay out to ensure the US plants its flag first. NASA signed new $3 billion. contracted last year with Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Jeff Basos, to build another lunar lander and Jim Free is very clear that he sees it as an option if SpaceX spacecraft continue to explode if we have a problem with one , uh, we will. we have another one to rely on, you know, if we rely on a particular aspect on SpaceX or the blue origin and it doesn't work, then we have another Lander that can take our cruise in this battle of the Bezos blue origin billionaire stargazers. has far fewer launches than Musk SpaceX and has been much quieter about his ambitions so far, so what we're looking to do is not only get to the moon and back, but also make it reliable, repeatable and low-cost. .

John cis' title at Blue Origin is senior vice president of lunar permanence and says a lot about the company's ambition. The landers that Blue Origin will build are reusable, we will launch them into lunar orbit and leave them there and refuel them in orbit. so that several astronauts can use the same vehicle back and forth, our cameras were among the first to be able to enter the enormous blue Origins complex in Florida, right next to the Kennedy Space Center, this is where the future is being built, that's right , this is the main floor of the factory. for the new Glenn rocket, the new Glenn is blue, the first heavy lift rocket from Origins, its maiden launch will be sometime this year, so you can see here we already have three different second stages under construction here.

The first new Glenn is now available at the Blue Origins launch complex. It is designed to carry all types of payloads, including the lunar lander being built for NASA, so this is the mark1 lander. We call it our little lander. This is the small one. Yes, it's actually a mockup of their cargo lander in blue. Origins Florida Lobby John Calores used to work at SpaceX and came to Blue to help speed things up, is there some kind of space race between you and SpaceX, so the country needs competition, we need options, competition brings innovation, but Hasn't he had anything resembling achievements? that SpaceX has had at this point Do you have?

SpaceX has done some incredible things and changed the narrative around access to space and Blue Origin is looking to do the same with this lander that we hope to land on the moon between 12 and 16 months from today 12 and 16 months from now. as of today yes and I understand it, I say it publicly, but that's what our team is aiming for, but that's for the cargo lander, what about humans for humans? We are working with NASA on the aremis. 5 mission planned for 2029 that's not all that different from Elon Musk's forecast for when SpaceX will be able to take humans back to the moon, even if it doesn't agree with NASA how the blue Origins Lander starship will require refueling in space, but Caloris insists that he and his rocket will help NASA cut costs our new vehicle Glen will be a reusable vehicle from its first mission that Lander for the astronauts is a reusable Lander so now you are not just taking the equipment and throwing it away, you are reusing for the next mission You do it again and again and again and that is exactly where the cost savings come from, now we are building with NASA the infrastructure to guarantee lunar permanence.

You have said that the emis program is the beginning, not the end. Tell me what is the future you see. I see us landing on Mars, I absolutely see us landing on Mars, but we have to work across the moon to get to Mars, these are great goals, you know, get back to the moon, go to Mars, do we have the ability to do what are we dreaming? Do you know this is NASA? This agency is destined to continue doing great things. There is no doubt that what we are telling the agency is to be more realistic.

There is nothing wrong with being optimistic. In fact, optimism is required in this business. is necessary, the question is: can you also be more realistic?