Will Starship and Commercial Landers Make Artemis Better Than Apollo?

Hello, it's me, Tim Dodd, the everyday astronaut. As you probably know, NASA is working very hard to get humans back to the surface of the moon. And if all goes well, we could see this happening as early as 2024. And although I personally don't think it's very likely that that schedule

will

hold. We haven't seen such an ambitious timeline for landing humans on the Moon since the Apollo program back in the 1960s, not to mention that hardware controls are in place and astronauts are training to spend time on the Moon. It's an exciting time to be alive, but unlike the Apollo program, which ended up putting 12 humans on the surface of the moon at an astronomical cost, Artemis promises to be a sustainable program with an eventual lunar outpost and a permanent human presence. on the moon.

Shackleton Crater at the south pole of the moon. Yes, that's right now what we're talking about. Well then. This is the 21st century. You would be safe. I hope we can get back to the Moon cheaper using

better

technology and do it in a safer way than in the 1960s. Okay? Good? So today we are going to answer the question. Why does NASA think Artemis

will

be a sustainable program when the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft are so expensive and it will take at least two launches to get humans and their lunar

landers

to the moon?

This can't be more sustainable than Apollo, right? Well, we didn't even begin to scratch the surface of costs in my last video on SLS versus Starship. So today we're going to really dig into the total costs, including development, infrastructure and hardware, giving SLS and Orion a full cost audit, but we'll even show you how the Apollo and Artemis mission profiles differ, including the specific orbits and rendezvous and everything needed to get humans to the surface of the moon. And we'll even talk about the enhanced security considerations and hardware involved. Once we look at all of these details, we can answer the question, more than 50 years later, whether the Artemis program is actually an improvement over the Apollo program, or whether NASA is going completely in the wrong direction by returning humans. to the moon. began.

Welcome to part two of talking about SLS and comparing it, I guess, to everything out there up to this point. In the first part, we really focused on SLS versus Starship and explained why the two programs exist at the same time. Now, you don't have to watch that video to understand this one, but there are a lot of things that will help you understand the context and put things in place before watching this one. So if you haven't seen it yet, definitely check it out, but we were just getting started on that video because here's the deal, honestly, it's really, really, really hard, almost impossible, to responsibly compare a government program to the cost. . -In addition to contracting private companies, an incredibly ambitious vehicle that has not yet been fully developed.

So in the second part, we will focus more on comparing SLS and Orion with Apollo. Since of course the two shows have the same goal of landing humans on the moon, but we're really going to dive into the weeds here and now because of that, this is a long video. So you

better

grab a drink, get a notebook, find a comfortable chair, and get ready to learn. But as always, here are the timestamps for these sections. There are links in the description. And the timeline here on YouTube is also divided into sections. And of course, there is an article version of this video, which includes sources and methodology for easy searching and referencing. .

I think a lot of people assume that Artemis is just Apollo 2.0, and we're basically going to repeat what NASA did in the sixties and hopefully cheaper. Well, that's not really true right now. NASA is doing things a little differently and that cheaper part is certainly up for debate. If we just look at the mission profiles here we can get an idea of ​​how different these two vehicles and programs really are, but let's start by just laying out the different vehicles like we did in our last video. Again, sorry, some of this will just be a little repeat of the last video.

There are three main vehicles for Apollo and Artemis. These are the launch vehicle, the lunar lander and the command module. Of course, the launch vehicle is the rocket or rockets that put everything into orbit and take it to the moon. It is definitely one of the most exciting parts of each mission. And it's certainly the only thing you can really witness with your own eyes in person. The lunar lander is self-explanatory. It is the lander that lands on the lunar surface, hence lunar lander. For every kilogram of mass sent to the Moon's surface, almost 200 kilograms of rockets are needed to get there.

That's why you want the lunar lander to be as light as possible. And because lunar

landers

never need to fly through Earth's atmosphere, they can be super disassembled and even have landing legs that are so weak that they wouldn't even hold the craft on Earth because they are designed to only be used on the moon with its lower gravity. The command module is where astronauts hang out for most of the mission, but it's especially important during ascent and reentry, because sitting on top of what is essentially a giant bomb with a nozzle is pretty dangerous, since having a command module that can safely Abort is generally considered a very good idea.

Now, of course, I've already made too many videos on abort systems, including one on the Gemini capsule's ejection seats, another on why Space X and Boeing now use liquid fuel systems, and even why Starship doesn't appear to have a system of abortion and whether or not you should. So if you want to know anything about abortion systems, I definitely have you covered. And unlike the lunar lander, the command module needs to handle atmospheric flight, specifically the brutal heat of reentry and landing portions of the mission. For both of these programs, the command module uses an ablative heat shield, which intentionally sheds material and carries away heat.

Okay, so let's look at the two systems that will take humans to the moon, starting with the command modules. Although they may look similar, the Apollo capsule and the Orion capsule are quite different. The Orion capsule is five meters wide compared to the 3.9 meters wide of the Apollo capsule and sports an impressive nine cubic meters of habitable volume compared to 6.2 meters. So it's about 50% more volume and obviously a little more spacious and can accommodate up to six astronauts, although it will probably only fly four for the Artemis missions versus three for Apollo, in the capsule Apollo could technically fit five astronauts for rescue missions, but barely.

But what might be surprising is the mass of each vehicle. The Orion capsule and its service module weigh 26,520 kilograms when fully fueled, which is surprisingly lighter than the Apollo capsule and its service module, which weigh 28,800 kilograms. But just by looking at these two, you can see that they are basically the opposite of each other. The Apollo command module was quite small and had a large service module. And Orion is pretty much the opposite of that: a fairly large command module and a relatively small service module. This means that the Orion capsule and its service module have much less Delta-v or the ability to change its speed than the Apollo capsule and service module.

In fact, the Orion capsule and service module don't even have enough Delta-V to enter a non-low lunar orbit, with only about 1,200 meters per second of Delta V in front of the Apollo capsule and its service module. , which were more than twice, at about 2,800 meters per second, Delta V for those who are not familiar with Delta V is how much a spacecraft can change its speed in space. It is a combination of the mass of the vehicle, the mass of the payload and the mass of the propellant mixed with the amount of fuel available to burn and the efficiency of the engines.

So you can think of it in the same way as a car's range, which takes into account the efficiency of the engine, the size of the fuel tank, and how much the car has to push. Now, if you're a little confused about why we're talking about Delta-v and you still don't understand it, don't worry. It will be less confusing, because we are going to show you why this is important, because this little fact here

make

s a big difference in how each system takes astronauts to the moon and why the orbits of these two programs are extremely different.

Well. Speaking of extremely different things, let's look at lunar landers next. Now this will be fun to talk about because we can actually talk about four different lunar landers. Since there are currently three lunar landers selected for the development of the Artemis program. For the Apollo program, of course, we have the iconic Apollo Lunar Module, sometimes called LEM or Lunar Excursion Module. This spider-like vehicle produced by Grumman measured seven meters high, 9.4 meters wide with its legs extended and weighed up to 16,400 kilograms with full fuel. It could transport two astronauts to the surface of the moon for up to 75 hours.

For the Artemis program, we have the human landing system, which is a set of

commercial

contracts, more like the

commercial

crew program than SLS and Orion. So, basically, NASA bypassed strict guidelines and accepted offers that they thought could get a system to the moon within that ambitious 2024 timeline. At the moment, we still don't have many details about all of these systems. So for now, we're just going to

make

a rough estimate of the size of all of these systems; They are intended to have up to four astronauts on leave of up to two weeks. There are currently three incredibly different vehicles.

Although NASA could reduce the selection to two in 2021, the three currently chosen and in the next phase of development are the national Dynetics team led by Blue Origin and SpaceX with a lunar version of its Starship. The national team's Lander features a Blue Origin Lander stage, a Lockheed Martin ascent stage, a Northrop Grumman and Draper transfer element vehicle that develops descent guidance and flight avionics. The system is about two-thirds reusable and only the lunar lander portion is used once at first, although I speculate it could eventually be refueled on the surface and, if there is enough Delta-v, perhaps they could reuse the lander as well. .

I really do not know. The national team's Lander will likely fly on some of Blue Origin's New Glenn rockets, but it could fly on a few other rockets, including segments that will fly as co-manifest payloads on an upgraded SLS Block 1-B, we don't really have those. However, there are still details. The Dynetics Lander is a low-altitude lunar lander, perhaps resembling a dachshund. And it has a unique look here, with more than 20 subcontractors, the most notable being Draper, Sierra Nevada, United Launch Alliance and Thales Alenia. It has eight landing engines that are fully reusable for multiple missions.

The only thing that is discarded on each landing is a simple pair of fuel tanks. The Lander can fit on a single SLS 1B cargo version, or they also mentioned that it could fly in segments on ULA's upcoming Vulcan rocket. I'm not really sure how many launches were necessary, but I'm guessing it has to be at least two Vulcans to get a lander that size to the Moon. Lastly, to almost everyone's surprise, NASA also chose SpaceX's Starship as an option. Now this version is just a lunar lander and is missing the aerodynamic features and extra heat shield, but it also includes extra lander engines near the top.

Now, the Starship reuse really confuses me because I mean, it sure would be an awesome outpost. Just keep that thing there. You have about a thousand cubic meters of habitable volume. Yes. Just land it once and never touch it again. If you're going to refly it and reuse it, it actually has to probably return to low-Earth orbit or at least Earth orbit and refuel via multiple Starship tanker refueling flights, which It's no small thing. So, this means that in order to carry out each and every mission, including the first one, there will have to be many complete, Super Heavy Starship missions launched one after another.

Now we'll delve into this in a second. And in an upcoming video, we're going to talk a lot about this as well, because if we're going to go over all the different payload options for getting Starship stuff to the moon, including Starship refueling versus kick stages, let'sdive very, very deep. I promise. After the next phase of selection and more detailed proposals scheduled for February 2021, we can make an update truly comparing the three landers in this human landing system. So keep in mind that for the Artemis program, each of these lunar landers requires its own trip to the moon and they cannot be launched on the same rocket that the astronauts will be launched on, as the Apollo program did with Saturn .

V. Lastly, rockets, as you know from my last video, the Artemis program will use the Space Launch System or SLS rocket to deliver the Orion capsule and its service module to the moon. The Apollo program used the powerful Saturn V, which could carry the Apollo command module and service module and the lunar module. Now, as a refresher, here are the specifications of these main rockets for the SLS. We will show you the upgrade of Block 1 and Block 1B that can fly in later missions. Regardless, its takeoff thrust is the same at 39.1 Mega Newtons, which is above the 35.1 Mega Newtons of the Saturn V.

The LEO capacity for SLS is 95 tons or a little more, 97 tons for Block 1B and Saturn V could put 140 tons into LEO. The upgrade to the SLS 1B doesn't change the LEO capability much because the core stage pretty much puts the upper stage into LEO, which we'll talk more about here in a second, but by having a more capable stage in low Earth orbit, it means the capability of translunar injection may increase. And we call this TLI capability, and it's just a measure of how much mass the rocket can send on a trajectory to the moon, but not necessarily put it into lunar orbit or land on the moon.

It's just what can shoot for the moon. And note Block 1B four RL 10s in their much larger Upper Exploration Stage compared to SLS Block 1, which only has one RL 10 in the smaller Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage. That's why we see the difference here with the TLI performance of the 27 ton SLS or 43 ton with the Block 1B and the 48.6 ton Saturn V. Yes, it's really confusing that the less powerful Saturn V actually has more capacity than the SLS, but having a three-stage rocket, two of which are huge high-energy hydrogen stages, was definitely worth it. And then, of course, in the Artemis program, we'll see a variety of other launch vehicles, from Starship to Vulcan to New Glenn.

And who knows, maybe even some new or smaller rockets will end up being part of the program. Therefore, these two programs have extremely different hardware options and capabilities. So you'd probably think that these hardware choices affect the missions. Surely yes and boy are they different! As you may know, getting to the moon is not as simple as simply pointing a rocket up to fly into space and slowing down when you reach the moon. Getting to the moon is not an easy path. It requires some orbital mechanics and some maneuvering to get there accurately. So here we will show you the mission profiles.

And here's a little side note. This will be a sort of eventual standard flight profile of the SLS entering its nearly rectilinear halo orbit. But as of now, the first two or perhaps three missions to the moon will be slightly different flybys or orbits until the moongate is parked there. But if the words near a rectilinear halo orbit sound super confusing and intimidating, don't worry by the end of this section, you'll understand how it's different and why NASA chooses it for the Artemis missions. Quick reveal, our timeline and numbers will probably be a little off because Artemis doesn't even have this stuff published yet.

And the first two or three missions will probably be a little bit different than this one, but this is just a generic of what eventually Artemis will probably be doing to get into that almost rectilinear halo orbit, but even our Apollo profile here is kind of generic already. Each and every mission had some unique variations. So let's put both missions together and compare them side by side, which in theory would be possible because the SLS will take off from LC-39B and the Saturn V will take off almost exclusively from LC-39A. Apollo 10 was the only Saturn V mission to launch from LC-39B.

Upon takeoff, the Saturn V was, of course, powered by its five powerful F1 engines. The SLS will fire its four RS-25 main engines and then ignite its massive solid rocket boosters when it's time to leave. And take off! The two rockets ascend quite vertically at first to break through the atmosphere, but they also pitch downward to begin accelerating horizontally because, after all, to get to space, you can simply leave the atmosphere, but to stay in space, you have have to go sideways very, very fast. After two minutes and six seconds, the SLS's side thrusters run out of fuel and ours is jettisoned.

At two minutes and 39 seconds, the Saturn V loses its first stage, the S-1C, and ignites its second stage, the S-11. SLS will run its core stage and four RS-25s from sea level nearly to orbit, with a cutoff in eight minutes, placing the upper stage and Orion on a highly elliptical suborbital trajectory with an apogee of up to nearly 2,000 kilometers. They do this to discard the core stage, so that it can burn out on re-entry while still getting the highest possible output. The space shuttle did something similar, leaving the external fuel tank on a suborbital trajectory at the time of separation.

The Saturn V S-II ran out of fuel just short of orbit eight minutes and 56 seconds into the flight and required the third stage, the S-IVB, to fire for about two and a half more minutes to 11 minutes and 23 seconds. seconds to enter its 160 kilometer by 160 kilometer parking orbit. The upper stage of the SLS will perform an orbit raising maneuver at its highest point or Apogee. And it will raise its perigee or lowest point from a suborbital trajectory to approximately 160 kilometers within the first hour after launch. This is called a perigee rise maneuver or PRM. And it's what actually puts Orion into orbit and at the same time allows the core stage to re-enter.

So now we have our two spacecraft in wildly different orbits around Earth, preparing for their translunar injection, or TLI. This is where they fire up their engines and raise the orbit to basically intersect with where the moon will be. The Artemis missions after Artemis II will do this on the first orbit, only about an hour and a half after launch, but ignition will take a long time, about 18 minutes due to the low thrust of the RL-10-B2 engine, the Apollo missions. They performed their TLI via a 350-second burn with their single J-2 engine on the S-IVB at 2 hours and 44 minutes after orbiting the Earth one and a half times.

As I hope those of you who have played the Kerbal space program know, it actually raises its orbit ahead of where the Moon currently is, specifically 67 degrees ahead of Earth. And thanks to orbital mechanics, your spaceship will arrive at the moon at the same time the moon arrives. But just to make this animation and graph look simpler, we keep the moon in a position relative to the Earth because animating where it is continually during the mission gets very, very confusing. So you should know that if you were to raise your orbit to where the moon currently is, you would miss it by a lot.

Within the first hour of the coastal phase to the moon, the Apollo mission did something that is still quite unique. The command module with its large service module would separate from the S-IVB upper stage and the S-IVB would open a fairing holding the lunar lander. The command module would then turn around and dock with the lunar lander and extract it from the upper stage. Once the two spacecraft came together, they made some mid-course corrections to aim about a hundred kilometers above the lunar surface on the far side of the Moon. Now let's zoom out and believe it or not, this is the actual scale of the Earth and the Moon, their size and distance are correct.

The good thing is that we have high definition and 4K monitors and televisions, because it is very difficult to see them together at this scale. But since you don't usually see these missions drawn like this to scale, I thought it would be cool to draw them well, so you can have this perspective of how far the Moon really is from Earth. It's pretty crazy. It is not like this? In fact, check this out! Observe how long it takes for a beam of light or a radio transmission to travel from the Earth to the Moon. And going back to this scale, we can see it move back and forth in real time.

Yes, this is in real time. So that distance is what caused the delays in the transmission of the Apollo program. After a few days of inertia, the next step will be the orbital insertion burn. This is where the spacecraft slows down enough to be captured in lunar orbit. If the spacecraft's engine does not start and slow down, the spacecraft could be thrown into orbit, taking it very far from Earth. That's terrifying. So because of this, the Apollo missions generally aimed for a free return trajectory, meaning that if nothing happened, the moon's gravitational pull launches the spacecraft back to Earth, but from Apollo 12 onwards , after a post-TLI systems check, they would take a course. correction and target their landing sites.

But it wouldn't be a free return trajectory after that point. Because the Apollo missions generally aimed for a free return trajectory, their initial apogee around Earth was higher beyond the moon, which despite being a longer total orbital period, means they will actually reach the moon faster than Artemis. So while both vehicles will end up orbiting the moon, Artemis and Apollo orbit the moon in completely different ways. The Apollo program also did something that wasn't really ideal because they would do the spacecraft insertion into lunar orbit while on the far side of the moon there was no communication for the entire six minutes that they put the astronauts into lunar orbit to the Apollo program. .

Typically, this would occur a little after three days from launch; The Apollo service module would first place the crew into a parking orbit of approximately 100 kilometers by 300 kilometers before finally circularizing and approaching one hundred kilometers by one hundred kilometers around the moon. And they were an equatorial species of fish by nature. Instead of circling the far side of the moon, Artemis will aim about 100 kilometers above the moon's north pole. After about four or five days of reaching the moon, the Artemis missions will make their insertion, but they will never end up in a circular orbit. In fact, due to its small service module and low Delta-v, the Orion capsule will barely reach lunar orbit.

It will eventually be a very elliptical orbit of about 3,000 kilometers by about 70,000 kilometers and only requires about 250 m/s of Delta-v to enter this orbit. But this could vary from mission to mission until the Lunar Portal is finally stationed in that orbit. This particular orbit is that almost rectilinear halo orbit we've been talking about or NRHO. And it has a pretty big advantage for crew safety. Its unique orbit allows the spacecraft to be in constant contact with mission control on Earth, because it never trails the moon from Earth's point of view and NRHO's elliptical orbits pass by the north and south poles. of the moon, but the orbit is also perpendicular. to Earth, so Earth can always see the spacecraft.

The closest point of the orbit is at the north pole, meaning the spacecraft spends most of its time south of the moon with orbital periods lasting 6 to 8 days, compared to the Apollo programs of two hours, believe it or not, a spaceship. or a space station can remain in this orbit with relatively little maintenance, since the Earth pulls the entire orbit equally. Naturally, you want to stay in the same orientation regardless of where the Moon is in relation to the Earth. Unlike the Apollo missions, which landed on the entire moon between 26 degrees north and 9 degrees south, all Artemis missions will land on the moon's south pole, in Shackleton Crater.

Once the vehicles were in their wildly different orbits, they will stay there for a while. In the case of the Apollo missions, they typically spent about a day in lunar orbit before the two-person crew left the command module, powered up the lunar lander, and began their landing phase. Artemis' journey from here will be quite different compared to Apollo's. Once in lunar orbit, the Orion spacecraft will dock with the upcoming Gateway we keep talking about, but not really, which is planned to be permanently at NRHO or, until it's ready, it will dock with the Lunar Lander, which will find it at NRHO.

Crewfrom two to four that will land on the moon then transfer it to the human landing system and undock it from the gateway or Orion. Once the human lander is over the moon's north pole, it will lower its apoapsis or apolune and place the vehicle into a circular polar orbit around the moon. Now that we have both landers in a more circular orbit and are ready to land, the actual landing phase should be quite similar. Basically, they slow down enough so that their trajectory intercepts the target landing site and then burn until they finally land softly, right on the target.

Well. So, as we mentioned before, the length of hanging out on the moon can and will vary a lot, from Apollo peaking in about 3 days to Artemis planning up to two weeks per mission, but now let's fast forward and pretend it's time to start. home. Well, from here, the two programs are quite similar. The lunar lander, or perhaps just an ascent stage, will lift off from the lunar surface once it is aligned with the command module so it can rendezvous with it. The Artemis missions will likely park in a low lunar orbit before raising their orbits to match Orion or gateway and enter that nearly rectilinear Halo orbit.

Again, the Apollo lunar module would only use the ascent stage to enter lunar orbit and would do so with a single burn that would last just over seven minutes. It would then circle its orbit on its apoluna using only the reaction control system. Also known as RCS thrusters. The Apollo lunar lander would then dock with the command module and transfer all of its lunar elements. The lunar ascent module was jettisoned while the crew prepared for trans-terrestrial injection. This would again occur on the far side of the Moon, away from radio communications, for the entire two and a half minutes of burning.

But back to Orion, it will do something quite similar after it undocks from the gateway or human landing system and prepares for its transterrestrial injection. However, the ascent stage, rather than being discarded or discarded, is intended to be reused. And I think that's pretty amazing. Orion will burn at 220 meters per second as it flies over the moon's north pole. And again, because of that almost rectilinear halo orbit, it will be within line of sight and communication with Earth at all times. Therefore, it will take about the same amount of time to return from the moon as it will to get to the moon for each mission.

The Apollo missions took about three days to return and will take about five days to return to Orion before re-entering. Each vehicle will first discard its service module and flipped heat shield and then, as you may remember from that video I made about how you returned from orbit. Earth's atmosphere does the rest of the work. As I said, even though the destination is the same and the hardware seems quite similar, these two programs reach the moon in incredibly different ways. So I guess this begs the question of whether the Artemis program is actually safer. . Why haven't we been back to the moon since 1972?

It's a very common question. And there are a handful of reasons, too many to go into now, but perhaps the most common thought is why don't we rebuild the five Saturns and the Apollo capsule and do it all over again? Well, it doesn't take long to realize that the way we got to the moon with the Apollo program was incredibly risky. And in retrospect, NASA maybe dodged a bullet while driving a two-wheeled car off the edge of a cliff into a tornado while buying lottery tickets. But, strangely enough, the risks in retrospect were not as bad as the calculated risks of the Apollo program, which was a 5%, 5% chance of surviving going to the moon and returning home safely.

Oh yeah. Well, that's the numerical estimate of the probability of success at the beginning of the program, it's not good, but it was a race to the moon. And fortunately it was much better than a 5% chance of success, but still a lot of things went wrong and you don't need to be too familiar with the Apollo program to know how close almost every mission came to a total catastrophe at one point or another. other. Here is a short list of some notable events. Of course, there is the Apollo 1 incident, which tragically resulted in the loss of three astronauts before the mission even began.

It was just a training mission, but that led to reconsideration of a pure oxygen environment, but it also changed the pace for NASA and really reiterated their safety considerations. Or of course even the famous Apollo 11 had a lot of problems. The computer triggered multiple alarms, just before landing on the moon, which almost caused the entire system to fail, not to mention that the switch that activated the ascent stage to go down to the moon broke upon returning from the moonwalk. Buzz Aldrin had to use a marker to make sure the circuit breaker was in the correct position, ensuring they could turn on the ascent motor.

Apollo 12 was struck twice by lightning during its ascent and nearly aborted the mission. Yes, from here, of course, came the famous SCE to AUX, which saved the mission. Apollo 13 was a mission that by all indications should have been lost, but thanks to excellent communication, quick thinking, determination, and the courageous nature of mission control and the crew, they managed to return home safely. . Apollo 15 only had two of its three parachutes open upon reentry upon return, resulting in a rougher than normal landing and if one more had failed, it would likely have resulted in the loss of the crew.

And so on and so on and so on. NASA was very lucky to take such big risks, but also reap huge rewards. Modern NASA is much more aware of what failures do to a program, especially one that does not have seemingly unlimited funding and support like the Apollo program did. The two space shuttle disasters were not only enormous tragedies for the crew, families, and those involved in the missions, but they were politically horrific and jeopardized future NASA funding and programs. But as the space shuttle program was being designed, NASA changed the way they certified and calculated risks.

Therefore, today NASA calculates the exact failure rate of each and every component and evaluates the risk involved in each component, subcomponent and failure of the system. Well. Well. All of that is great. Sure. NASA now knows how to best calculate risk and it would be safe to assume that the Orion capsule, SLS and all other vehicles involved in Artemis will meet a much higher safety standard. So here are some fun and tangible improvements in safety and performance of the Orion capsule compared to the Apollo capsule as a good example of some of those changes. Orion has a massive upgrade and its aluminum pressure vessel is not only newly alloyed, but also friction welded for maximum strength and fewer defects.

These upgrades allow the Orion pressure vessel to be reused up to 10 times. The Apollo capsule ran on fuel cells, which, as is known, were unusable during the Apollo 13 mission and energy consumption was one of the most important factors for the crew to return home safely. Instead, Orion will be powered by solar power and 120-volt lithium-ion batteries. Of course, the interface and computers have had a massive overhaul, as you can probably imagine. The interface no longer consists of heavy mechanical switches or hardware. Instead, they are sleek, lightweight, highly configurable computers with minimal mechanical switches, only about 60. And yes, of course, the computers in Orion are substantially updated from computers from 50 years ago.

Orion's computer is a thousand times more powerful and there are redundant computers compared to Apollo's. Orion can communicate with TDRS satellites or the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System using phased antennas. And it can also communicate with terrestrial sites. Navigation has been greatly improved because Orion can use modern GPS satellites when it is near Earth and when it is far from Earth, it has automatic star tracking equipment that is much more advanced than those on the ISS. Even the docking system has a new Tridar or 3D laser range and also a highly improved camera, which will allow automatic docking.

The thermal protection system features silica tiles similar to those on the space shuttle on the side walls of the spacecraft. And it has the largest ablative heat shield ever built, measuring five meters wide and weighing 450 kilograms. The seats in the Orion capsule, while frankly looking like a toy version of the Apollo seats, are much lighter and can actually absorb more impact upon landing. Parachutes have been improved, of course, but even the way they deploy now relies on redundant sensors. Apollo relied on barometric sensors only to determine parachute activation. Orion will also have GPS and inertial measurement units.

Orion will even have better radiation shielding with materials better suited to absorbing and deflecting radiation, but there are also considerations for building a temporary shelter in case of severe radiation storms. Well. Well. So NASA has a lot of new safety considerations and has made the improvements that would be expected on Orion to make it much safer than Apollo, but what does all this increased safety cost us? What happened to this new sustainable program? Well, the cost rabbit hole was about to begin... In fact, let's peel back these layers of onion here and dig really deep into this because why not?

And in our last video we made some pretty general assumptions. So we should probably dig deeper into this because talking about price is tremendously difficult when the programs include development, operations, and hardware. Now, here's the deal: of course, we had to make some assumptions in order to calculate some of these things. So project into the future to get an idea of ​​how much some of these things cost. That said, here's a really rough and conservative estimate of how much Artemis will cost from Artemis I to Artemis 8. To date, the SLS program has cost about $16 billion. And Orion has cost around $12.5 billion if you count just from 2011 onwards.

So, not including the five years of development during the Constellation program. Now, based on the 2020 Office of Inspector General report on the cost and future costs of SLS Orion, infrastructure and the mobile launch tower, we can project how long it will take us to get to Artemis 1, the first uncrewed flight around the moon. For Artemis 1, the SLS program will have spent about $18.3 billion and the Orion program will have spent about $13.6 billion. But now part of that budget has already been allocated to the purchase of hardware and future missions. The first flight with humans is Artemis II, which again features an SLS and an Orion capsule orbiting the moon on a free return trajectory.

And again, according to the OIG report, if that happens in 2023, NASA will have spent about $38.4 billion on the program in total. That doesn't sound good, does it? But wait, here comes good news. Now, at this point, the program will have a more stable production line and NASA has already agreed to purchase SLS boosters for $870,000,000 and 3 more Orion capsules for $900 million. After that, Orion will drop to $750 million. Now being conservative with these numbers and annual budgets. If NASA only spends about $300 million a year to run an operational SLS and about $200 million to run an Orion program, we can project all the way to Artemis 8.

Assuming we have one mission per year after Artemis II to a total of about 51.6 billion or about 6.5 billion per mission. But, of course, so far something very important is missing from the figures that will make the Moon landing possible. That's the lunar lander. Oh, sure. It might be necessary. NASA has already budgeted $4 billion for the first year of the human landing system portion of the Artemis program. Now, a conservative estimate of the amount of money it will take to finish the project, build the first Lander and a single rocket or multiple rockets to carry the Lander system for Artemis three would be $10 billion.

And again, that's a very conservative estimate. So now let's add the lunar lander, the launch, and the annual costs of the program, which would be about $3 billion a year. And once the human landing systemsare up and running and in a reusable state, we will be able to reduce the cost of operations to just 500 million, which would help take into account overall program costs and refueling launches and all those other considerations. However, again, this is a very rough and conservative estimate. Fortunately, these services will be fixed-price contracts. So, once we know the real costs, it will be practically impossible for there to be cost overruns.

Now let's do the math on program cost divided by mission. Artemis 1 would cost about $32 billion and Artemis II would drop to about $19.2 billion, but Artemis III would bring the cost to about $16.9 billion because of that lunar lander. If Artemis reaches Artemis 8, they could reach less than $9 billion, the average cost of each mission when development costs are taken into account. Fortunately, because many of these systems and landers would be repurposed and repurposed, the cost could go down quite a bit from there, especially when you depreciate all development costs from there on out, but reusing the hardware could really reduce that. cost to something much more reasonable.

But of course, all of this still sounds pretty expensive, but we still have nothing to compare it to. So how do the costs compare to those of the Apollo program? The Apollo program cost about $28 billion between 1961 and 1973, according to a very comprehensive report by the Planetary Society. In today's money, that's equivalent to about $283 billion. But this insane cost wasn't just for missions to the moon. This includes all the Gemini launches, the lunar probes, all the Apollo developments and launches, all the Saturn 1, Saturn 1B and Saturn V developments and launches up to 1973. But that also includes all the modern infrastructure that is the Space Center Kennedy, including, of course, the Vehicle Assembly Building the launch pads, the crawlers, the press site and dozens of huge office buildings.

Also, basically everything at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, the ground tracking stations, the Stennis Cpace Center for testing rocket engines, almost everything at the Marshall Space Center, and so on, and so on. Well. Basically everything NASA built during the Apollo era with part of that $283 billion. The Apollo program left us much more than footprints on the moon. But if we break it down to just the actual physical cost of the Saturn V, the Apollo command and service modules, and the development and construction budget for the lunar landers seen here, that total turns out to be more than half, around of 155 billion current dollars. .

Well. So now we're about to do something incredibly stupid and try to compare apples to light bulbs or something. And keep in mind that there is almost no way to compare these two fairly, but remember that all costs are shown adjusted to today's dollars. If you take the $38.3 billion spent to develop and build the Apollo command and service module and its share of guidance, navigation and instrumentation costs and divide it by the 34 items that were built, tested and flown, you get really approximate figure. per unit is estimated at $1.4 billion in today's dollars. So if we take the lunar modules, $23 billion for development construction and its guidance, navigation and instrumentation portion, divided by the 25 items that were built, tested and flown, we end up with about $1.3 billion. from dollars to today's dollars.

And lastly, the Saturn V, if we take the total development cost of $66.6.1 billion plus their share of engine development and divide it by the 17 that were built, tested and flown, we get about $4.5 billion for Saturn V. Now, if we assume we will get to Artemis 8, we can take the costs of the Orion program at $21.8 billion and then divide that by the 20 or so units that will have been built, tested, and some flown. We get a total price of $1.1 billion per unit. Then the wild card here: the human landing system. If we take what will likely be at least $17.5 billion for Artemis 8 and calculate a total of, say, 12 units that will have been built and tested, with some flown, we get a total of $1.5 billion per lander.

But again, this also takes into account the rockets that will take them to the moon. And note that I took into account 12 units, although we don't need one, especially for the first two Artemis missions, there may be multiple Landers involved at this point because some of them are going to serve some uncrewed flight tests. Some of them may be sitting on the surface doing other things, but that could be almost all they end up building because don't forget that they will be at least partially or even fully reusable. Therefore, it would actually be much cheaper. The more times they are used.

And now, finally, SLS let's take the $29.8 billion and then divide it by the 10 items that will have been built. Some have just been tested and others have already flown. And we ended up with a total cost of about $3 billion per rocket. It's interesting. Substantially more flights and physical hardware units were now built, tested, and flown during the Apollo era than there are today for the Artemis missions. But then everything was more expensive. I mean, they had to invent everything from scratch. One would really hope that today we can make spacecraft and rockets cheaper than we did 50+ years ago.

And again, it might be easy to say, well, look how much more we got out of the Apollo program. Taking into account that we start from scratch. It will take us about the same amount of money and time to do it again in the 21st century. Artemis is not Apollo 2.0, despite being Apollo's sister in Greek mythology, Artemis is substantially safer, more spacious, and designed to spend much more time on the surface of the moon. Now, we won't even get into this since mission planning is still up in the air with the Artemis program, but even the shortest missions for Artemis will last almost a week or more than twice as long as Apollo 17, the longest. . lunar mission to date.

And Artemis can potentially take up to four astronauts to the moon at a time for up to two weeks per mission. It could end up being 10 times cheaper per human hour on the moon's surface compared to the Apollo program. Well. So perhaps what Artemis lacks is real cost savings and timely schedules, it makes up for simply in time and capabilities on the moon. So maybe we should look at some of the things that slowed down and put SLS and Orion over budget in the past and see if we're doomed to see more of these things in the future.

And now, the moment when everyone was probably waiting for a rant. I think one of the biggest frustrations I have with the Artemis program, besides the ridiculous costs of SLS and the fact that it is barely capable of getting Orion to the moon, is the fact that it uses hardware that has not only been developed for the most part, but even pulling from an existing inventory of hardware to use as the base of the vehicle. Now, it's not the fact that they are reusing old hardware. I mean, in theory, that makes sense. And of course, you'd only do this to save money, right?

So I guess that's where there's a big disconnect for me between reusing parts, contracts and infrastructure and cost, because boy are there some costs. Solid rocket boosters, which literally have all the hardware needed to make a whopping 16 boosters. It has cost $2.4 billion, $2.4 billion to take some empty casings of the existing boosters and refurbish and upgrade them to be five-segment boosters. Yes, of course they had to change to a new engine. Yes, they had to upgrade some avionics components and a plug, but for $2.4 billion, you would have thought they had started from scratch and built an entirely new type of rocket booster.

And oddly enough, Northrup Grumman claims that when they get to the replacement booster, the BOLE booster, which is basically the core state of the Omega rocket, they will be able to produce those new boosters cheaper than the reused originals. Or look at the RS-25s: Aerojet received $570 million just to refurbish the RS-25Ds and recertify them for flight. I mean, yeah, there was a lot of work that went into this. I mean, testing dozens of engines and recertifying them for new profiles, but again, the hardware already existed and spending over half a billion dollars to get some engines that already flew on the space shuttle ready to fly is a difficult thing to do. swallow.

And NASA has officially paid for 24 more RS-25s for a total of $3.5 billion, including $1 billion to restart production after the reboot. And in the initial six engines, $1.8 billion was spent on just 18 engines. So the cost per engine after all that is about a hundred million dollars. Yes. That's almost as expensive as a single-engine reusable Falcon Heavy. Or there is the interim cryogenic upper stage which will cost around $500 million for three units and a test unit. So we're looking at an upper stage that will cost around $125 million just for the upper stage. Or what about the mobile launch tower?

I didn't even want to start with the mobile launch tower. This tower ended up costing around a billion dollars. Yes. This tower built out of steel with some, uh, umbilical fasteners and crew access arm, somehow ended up costing more than half as much as the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. How, how does that happen? You could literally accumulate the almost billion dollars it took to build the mobile launch tower and it would literally reach space. But finally, perhaps most damning was the amount of money Boeing received to build the center stage. Boeing has received about $6.7 billion to design, build and test just two core stages.

How is that possible? This is what I don't understand. And I'm sorry. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Yes, they are using a new material. Yes. They installed the largest friction stir welder in the world and had some problems with it. Yes. A tornado devastated Michoud. Yes, they once dropped a tank. Oops. But still that's just ridiculous. Why wasn't there a much firmer price limit for all of this that fired up Boeing's butt a little to get everything done on time and at a better price? Frankly, NASA will have to offset the costs of SLS because cutting costs is irresponsible at best, frustrating at worst, a blatant misuse of taxpayer money, and feels almost criminal.

We had to wait until 2019 for the new NASA administrator to arrive. Jim Bridenstine really came in and finally got things into shape. Jim started threatening to use commercial rockets to take us to the Moon in 2024. And Boeing seemed to get the memo because suddenly we saw them finally get going. But should he have followed through on that threat? What options really exist in the commercial world that can do the job of SLS and Orion? Well, we'll save that for part three, when we look at what could actually do the same amount of work and safely replace the SLS in getting humans to and from the moon, we'll go over all the commercial options, including Starship and Falcon Heavy, since You guys ask me about this all the time, and we actually look at the feasibility and the costs associated with them.

But now just a reminder for all of us, including me, if your blood is boiling, like mine right now, and if you need to understand why that cost-plus contract exists, remember to rewatch the last video on SLS and Starship. to help put all that into perspective. But in reality, it is a necessary evil to ensure that this actually happens. But now speaking of commercial options, let's talk about the good parts of the Artemis program. Now let's move on to the good parts of the Artemis program. No, no, I actually take back all the negativity and cost overruns we're seeing with SLS.

Honestly, I'm very glad that we are going to have that ability. I don't want it to be canceled before we have another vehicle available. So, although incredibly frustrating and expensive, the SLS is a good thing right now. Well. So let's try that again with the bulk of the Artemis program, the Human Landing System, which will use the fixed-price contracting scheme that we talked about in the last video, but it's amazing to see NASA use it on a more ambitious scale. After all, NASA didn't really give any direction on how these companies should build their landers. They didn't say how big or small they should make them.

They did not say what rockets they had to take them tothe moon, but they really let companies innovate and present proposals. Again, this is much more like the commercial crew program. NASA had a set of requirements and accepted proposals through this commercial partnership, which will allow multiple partners to innovate and deliver. Therefore, we can always have something non-common and redundant in suppliers. After all, redundancy is a very good thing, just like with the Commercial Crew Program, like we have Boeing and SpaceX, which have completely different parts and different suppliers, there really isn't any common ground between those two systems.

And that's a good thing because, as we know, Boeing has had some problems and they are very behind while SpaceX can continue to fulfill NASA missions. But of course there are still some unknowns because we don't know the exact figures of how much the human landing system will cost. Therefore, we cannot yet project whether it will offset the cost of SLS. But my gut feeling is that if Artemis really does become a sustained and continually funded project, and if the Landers end up being repurposed, it could be a big win for NASA. I mean, even the least reusable vehicle, Blue Origins' National Team Lander, only abandons the descent stage and reuses both the orbital tug stage and the ascent stage, meaning there's a chance to save a lot of money by not is discarded. 100% of your billion-dollar Lunar Lander with each and every mission.

And then there's Starship, which if fully reusable and launched on a fully reusable rocket, which of course is the plan, could end up representing a huge cost savings with the potential to truly change the game. So unlike Apollo, which had very little chance of getting cheaper as time went on, the Artemis program is based on evolving technologies, reuse, and eventual cost savings. Therefore, the longer the program runs, the cheaper and more sustainable it should be. It's built into the program, which is fantastic. Artemis against Apollo. Honestly, part of me really wishes NASA had rebuilt the Saturn V, found ways to make it cheaper than before, and done things the old-fashioned way, because it seems really hard to justify the SLS.

If reusing the literal leftover hardware sitting on the shelves was meant to make the rocket more profitable. It sure didn't help. And then, once they had to open up old and new manufacturing lines, why not just build F-1 and the entire Saturn V with modern, slightly updated technology? It's also a shame that Orion has such a small and relatively incapable service module, since SLS can't even carry anything larger than the moon for now. Of course, if it's upgraded, it could eventually do more, but even so, it's still less evenly matched with the Block 1B than it is with the Saturn V.

But it seems like this is the 21st century, rockets should by no means go backwards. . They should not be less capable and more expensive. We should get cheaper and more capable rockets. And I know it doesn't really seem like it, but when you take into account all the development costs and the different development rockets, the SLS is actually cheaper than the Saturn V. Especially if you only consider the Saturn Vs that flew. and subtract development costs, the SLS will be substantially cheaper, almost any way you cut it. But when it comes to the Artemis program as a whole, NASA is leaning heavily toward the commercial sector.

And I think it will be a great victory. And while NASA has already ordered many more SLSs than I think any of us would prefer, it at least ensures that we won't have a gap in supplier coverage like the nine-year gap the United States had when it ended the shuttle program earlier. than the commercial crew. The program was ready to fly. And this is vital. It's too easy for NASA to pull the rug out from under them with every change in administration. So by committing to something, even if it's expensive, at least you get going. But when you compare Apollo to the Artemis program, a lot of things have changed, but perhaps the biggest change is the risks themselves because the risks have changed.

The greatest risks of the Apollo program were related to human lives. While the biggest risk of the Artemis program is rather the financing risk and the constant fear of cancellation. And maybe that's not so sexy. After all, NASA had what seems like unlimited funding to get the Apollo program ahead of the Soviet Union. And now NASA has to act much more politically to ensure the survival of a program. I think my generation and future generations simply crave the excitement, pace and innovation of the Apollo era. And we end up wondering why everything is taking so long in what seems like a bad sequel to the first film.

After all, there is no denying that the Apollo program is not easily one of humanity's greatest achievements to date. It could forever be one of the most important moments in the history books. I mean, it's absolutely incredible that humans discovered all of this at a time when computers were the size of a room and most calculations were done with a slide rule. So even comparing the two shows side by side is perhaps a little unfair, but since we haven't seen humans on the moon in 50 years, it's important to weigh all the facts to see if we're really going to make it. this time, or are we just going to get our hopes up and watch another show get canceled and watch another decade slip through our fingers.

It's just a strange convergence in history that when we have a program up and running that can actually return humans to the moon, it happens that the commercial industry is booming and has matured to the point of being able to do it. much of the work. And he starts doing the show that has been in the works for almost a decade, suddenly looking 45 years old. But the good news is that simply paying for these vehicles helps ensure the success of the many business partners involved and other future business partners. So for me, Artemis, is not Apollo 2.0.

Artemis is more like the first commercial flights across the Atlantic in the FW 200 Condor than Charles Lindbergh's daring and dangerous flight in his single-engine Spirit of St. Louis. Artemis is preparing to be sustainable in a different way. Hopefully aligning the program to survive multiple administrations while paving the way for cheaper, more competitive business options. And that's definitely something to be excited about. So what do you think? Do you think the Artemis program is a step in the right direction or do you feel like NASA is going backwards and should have completely remade the Apollo program? Do you think this strange structure will end up making Artemis successful in the long run or do you think it will be canceled before humans get to the moon?

Let me know your opinion in the comments below. Did they make those amazing 3D renders that were used in the video? They were from Casper Stanley. You definitely have to find him on Twitter. He has an incredible job. He constantly does really impressive things. So be sure to follow him on Twitter and also check out his amazing Rocket Explorer app. Of course, I owe a huge thank you to my Patreon supporters for helping make this and all my other everyday astronaut content possible. If you want to help me write and research and get your thoughts on the videos and see little previews and see the scripts and stuff before we shoot, consider becoming a supporter on Patreon, where you'll get access to our exclusive subreddit, our exclusive Discord channel. and exclusive monthly livestreams by visiting patreon.com/everydayastronaut.

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