At press conferences both before and after the Demo-1 launch of the SpaceX Crew Dragon, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine was asked about progress on NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) and the planned mission of the Orion crew capsule. At the time, he indicated good progress and expressed his belief that a scheduled mission to send the Orion capsule around the moon some time in 2020 was still on track.
But in the two weeks since that press conference, things have changed, and they’ve changed in a way that could seriously redefine NASA, the future of human space flight, and everything to do with the space program. In the next few weeks, NASA is going to make a decision that could mean it is no longer in the business of making rockets.
In a Wednesday appearance before the Senate Commerce Committee, Bridenstine replied to a question about the scheduled Orion EM-1 flight—a flight that’s supposed to send Orion around the Moon—by suggesting that NASA might move the capsule off its planned ride on top of the SLS, and hand the flight to a commercially-built competitor. He admitted that the SLS is continuing to “struggle to meet its schedule,” and that the difficulty of assembling the giant vehicle means that “it’s going to take more time.” However, the NASA administrator insisted that he still wants EM-1 to go in 2020 as scheduled; which means considering a launch on a Delta 4 Heavy or a Falcon Heavy.
This wouldn’t be the first time an Orion capsule has been bolted to a Delta IV Heavy. In 2014, one of United Launch Alliance’s big boosters took the Orion on a two-orbit test flight. That mission had also been originally intended for the perennially late SLS.
But the EM-1 mission wasn’t designed just as an Orion flight. It’s supposed to be the first official SLS mission. More than that, it’s a mission that only the SLS can complete. The EM-1 mission would simply require more grunt than either the Delta IV Heavy or the Falcon Heavy have to give. The Orion, with its attached European Space Agency built service module, is too heavy to make orbit on either of the two available “heavy” commercial launchers—or at least, too heavy to make orbit and provide enough leftover mass for the booster necessary to make the flight around the Moon.
Under questioning, Bridenstine admitted that, and made a suggestion that seemed almost as shocking as the idea that EM-1 would not ride on the SLS. EM-1, he said, might not require one launch, but two.
On Thursday, Bridenstine spoke at a space transportation luncheon, where he reassured the audience of NASA’s commitment to SLS. But if Orion successfully goes to the Moon on a Delta IV, it might leave a lot of people in Congress wondering why they’re funding a multi-billion dollar effort to develop another launcher.
In his Senate testimony, Bridenstine suggested that the mission could be accomplished by two flights, getting all the components into space and docking them together. However, that also presents a problem since, as the director testified, NASA does not have “an ability to dock the Orion crew capsule with anything in orbit.”
Bridenstine emphasized again his commitment to making the flight happen in 2020 and suggested the agency could develop the necessary hardware and flight plans to completely revamp EM-1 in time. Republican Senate Roger Wicker, who was questioning the director at the time, raised an eyebrow as he reminded him. “It’s 2019.”
Donald Trump has made it clear that returning to the Moon is the one and only goal he cares about at NASA. SLS is running late, and Bridenstine is clearly feeling enormous pressure to make the EM-1 flight happened. Say … before November of 2020. That’s a combination that has NASA over a huge fiscal and philosophical barrel.
In a very real way, NASA has never been in the booster business. It hires companies, collaborates on designs, and pieces out the construction—often on a system that’s not a little influenced by trying to plant a bit of business in as many congressional districts as is possible. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t NASA rockets. Going back to when the nascent agency ordered up a version of the Thor ballistic missile mated to a new upper stage, NASA has certainly had its hand in creating rockets specific to their missions. Atlas, Centaur, and Titan all to one degree or another, carry NASA’s stamp, and the Saturn and Space Shuttle were the agency’s babies, for sure. Only … that was then.
There was the whole Ares family, which was designed to save money by using modified bits of Shuttle kit to build a new Saturn-sized launch vehicle. But it simply refused to come together after confronting radically different ideas about the agency’s mission between the Bush and Obama administrations. Ares officially died in 2011, only to be replaced by the also Shuttle-derived SLS. But NASA has been hamstrung by a series of rapidly shifting targets, cost overruns, and fluctuating budgets that left it unable to generate long term plans or assemble the sort of flexible, build-to-fit-the-mission system it wanted. Both the 2019 and 2020 budgets cut planned configurations from the SLS “family” leaving NASA’s flexible big rocket neither as big nor as flexible.
And now SLS is really on the ropes.
It’s not just EM-1 that’s under threat. Recently, NASA let it be known that they were looking for an alternative launch vehicle for the Europa Clipper mission, and it didn’t take a keen-eyed budget observer to notice that putting that big probe to Jupiter’s icy moon on something other than the SLS offered a potential saving of no less than $700 million.
And if SLS is delayed further, it could run into Blue Origin’s upcoming New Glenn, which has a capacity that could see it taking much of the NASA booster’s missions. SpaceX might even get the Super Heavy on the pad before SLS. But if that happens … it will probably be because there is no SLS.
Before the Senate, Bridenstine suggested that EM-1 might buy a commercial ticket, but Orion could return to SLS when it’s ready for the next mission. That seems … extremely dicey. Right now, the Falcon Heavy might be the best alternative ship for either Europa Clipper or EM-1, but it’s still far from perfect, especially when it comes launching Orion. The best real hope of launching EM-1 in 2020 is simply to get SLS on the pad. NASA can make a contingency plan for launching the mission on some other booster, but that plan isn’t likely to fly in time. Less likely to fly than SLS.
It’s not impossible for EM-1 to go up on SLS as planned. Right now, engineers at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans are closing in on completion of the “core stage” for that first flight, which includes four Space Shuttle main engines (not just the same model, but engines actually taken from Shuttles) mounted to better than 200 feet of fuel tanks and gear. Though progress has slipped, there’s still a track that sees the massive rocket arriving at Kennedy in time for a second half of 2020 launch. A dedicated focus, and no slip-ups, could see it arrive on time. NASA trying to get to the Moon in 2019 simply has to execute the way NASA did when trying to get to the Moon in 1969.
That may be the toughest mission of all. And whatever they’re going to do, the decision has to come fast.