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--:-- Noelle King: Lawmakers convened on Capitol Hill this week to politely but definitively put the screws to NASA. Last week, NASA announced the delay of Artemis 2 to September 2025 and Artemis 3 to September 2026.
--:-- Noelle King: I look forward to hearing from NASA about the cause of these delays. The Artemis missions will return man and woman this time to the moon. But the U.S. has competition from Chinese astronauts, from an unmanned Japanese craft that moon landed literally today. It looks like it has reached on the moon.
--:-- Noelle King: This modern space race is very expensive. So NASA is turning to the commercial space sector that's dominated by powerful CEOs, your Elon Musks and your Jeff Bezos-es. They strike out, too. In fact, an American company's moon lander crashed just this week, but they can afford it.
--:-- Noelle King: The race for the moon, coming up on Today Explained. To the moon! Support for Today Explained comes from Adio. Adio is an AI-native customer relationship management platform that Adio says is built for the next era of companies.
--:-- Noelle King: A powerful data structure adapts to your business model, sinks in all your contacts in minutes, and enriches your business with actionable data. Adio says it also allows you to create those email sequences, those real-time reports, those powerful automations, which they claim can help you build what matters most, your company.
--:-- Noelle King: You can go to adio.com slash todayexplained to get 15% off your first year. That's A-T-T-I-O dot com slash todayexplained.
--:-- Noelle King: Not all journalism is the same. Take The Guardian. Our coverage has something unique. Fierce independence. Nobody owns us or tells us what we can and can't say. So we're free to report the whole picture.
--:-- Noelle King: We connect what's happening in Washington to the rest of the globe, expose corruption wherever we find it, and give fresh perspective on everything, from wellness and soccer to culture, the climate and more.
--:-- Noelle King: Read, watch and listen to The Guardian for free at theguardian.com. That's one small step for man. Pardon. I am late, sir. Today it's plane.
--:-- Noelle King: I'm Noelle King. Chris Davenport covers NASA and the space industry for The Washington Post. He's been covering all the big space news, which, if you haven't been following closely, is that the U.S. is planning to go back to the moon.
--:-- Chris Davenport: So this was actually a plan called Artemis that was born during the Trump administration, where they decided they wanted to focus NASA on returning astronauts to the moon under the Obama administration. It had been this journey to Mars.
--:-- Chris Davenport: I understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the moon first, as previously planned. But I just have to say pretty bluntly here, we've been there before.
--:-- Chris Davenport: And the Trump administration came in and said, no, we want to go back to the moon. We're dreaming big. This is a giant step toward that inspiring future and toward reclaiming America's proud destiny in space.
--:-- Chris Davenport: And NASA's initial plan was to get astronauts there by 2028. The Trump administration came and said, no, we want to do that by 2024. This incredibly ambitious timeline that few thought was actually possible.
--:-- Chris Davenport: And as it turns out, it was it was not possible. But what was significant is that the Biden administration embraced the Artemis program, and that is the first time you have had subsequent presidential administrations embrace a moon mission or a deep space, human spaceflight mission since the Apollo era.
--:-- Chris Davenport: The mission you're about to go on, the United States is going to return. People on the moon, it's hard to believe for the first time in over 50 years.
--:-- Chris Davenport: And the worst part is I can remember exactly where I was when they announced that man just landed on the moon. Doesn't mean I'm old, it just means you guys are moving quickly.
--:-- Chris Davenport: So they did keep the Artemis program, which is a big deal. But the timeline, however, is changing. And they came in and said initially 2024 is not feasible. We're going to hope to do it by 2025.
--:-- Chris Davenport: Now, as we know, just recently they announced that's going to slip somewhat significantly. So what I want to tell you is we are adjusting our schedule to target Artemis II for September of 2025 and September of 2026 for Artemis III, which will send humans for the first time to the lunar south pole.
--:-- Chris Davenport: There's going to be the next mission, which will have four astronauts in the Orion capsule in the spacecraft, and it will fly around the moon. It won't land on the moon. It'll fly around it.
--:-- Chris Davenport: And that is being pushed back to September of next year and the lunar landing about a year after that, showing just how difficult these missions can be.
--:-- Chris Davenport: Man has been to the moon. Joe Biden and President Trump were both alive for it. Why, if we've been there and we've done it, are these two successive presidents who run the United States government, why are they so keen to get us back to the moon?
--:-- Chris Davenport: Well, the moon today, in some ways, is not the moon that we visited in the late 60s and early 70s during the Apollo era.
--:-- Chris Davenport: Oh, jeez. Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed. Rocket twink. Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot.
--:-- Chris Davenport: What we know about it today is that it's not dry. There's water on the moon. There's water in the form of ice at the poles of the moon, particularly in the south pole of the moon.
--:-- Chris Davenport: And so that's where NASA and the White House wants to go. And water is important because it's not just water to drink. And if you can break it up, oxygen to breathe.
--:-- Chris Davenport: But the component parts, hydrogen and oxygen, can also be used as rocket fuel. And if you can mine the water and then separate the parts, that is a very big deal that could allow broader exploration of the solar system and particularly getting to Mars.
--:-- Chris Davenport: The other thing that's different now, it's not just the United States. I mean, we had this Cold War space race during Apollo with the Soviet Union.
--:-- Chris Davenport: The dramatic achievements in space, which occurred in recent weeks, should have made clear to us all as did the Sputnik in 1957 the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take.
--:-- Chris Davenport: Now it's with China. And because of the presence of water and because of the presence of other resources there, both countries want to set up a more permanent presence and really stay there in order to take advantage of the resources there, which, again, is very different from Apollo, where we went, the astronauts stayed for a couple of days, and then they left and they came home.
--:-- Chris Davenport: Now they want to go and really go, but to stay. When NASA does send astronauts to the moon, as it's planned, you do, what is that mission going to look like?
--:-- Chris Davenport: Well, the first mission, you know, will be something similar to the previous ones. Two, one. Because that first mission won't be an enduring one. The astronauts will go, and they will come home.
--:-- Chris Davenport: They need to test out the hardware. Back to the moon and beyond. But what will be significant about it is while the rocket and the spacecraft that get the astronauts to the moon, the lunar land or the spacecraft that they'll transfer to to get them to the surface of the moon won't be owned and operated by NASA.
--:-- Chris Davenport: It'll be owned and operated by a private company on the first mission, it'll be SpaceX, which is obviously Elon Musk's company.
--:-- Chris Davenport: In order for the Artemis program to succeed, we must succeed with Starship. And like I said, we actually want to far exceed what NASA has asked us to do.
--:-- Chris Davenport: NASA is trying to harness the growing capability in the commercial space sector. And so SpaceX won that contract to build the spacecraft known as Starship to ferry astronauts to and from the lunar surface.
--:-- Chris Davenport: And on subsequent missions, it won't just be SpaceX. It'll be Blue Origin, which is Jeff Bezos' company. The lunar lander we're developing for NASA, the Mark II lander, that's part of the Artemis program.
--:-- Chris Davenport: They call it the sustaining lander program. Because they've also won a contract to build a lander capable of taking astronauts to the moon.
--:-- Chris Davenport: And this is the way, actually, NASA's been going for some time, building out these public-private partnerships.
--:-- Chris Davenport: It started with flying cargo and supplies to the International Space Station and science experiments, not people, but payloads and cargo.
--:-- Chris Davenport: That evolved into flying cargo to flying people to the International Space Station, and SpaceX does that now, and Boeing also has a contract to do that.
--:-- Chris Davenport: They haven't been able yet to fly astronauts there, but Boeing is working on it, and its first flight could come as soon as April.
--:-- Chris Davenport: And now they're extending that paradigm all the way out to the moon and having these public-private partnerships because, you know, we've got this growing commercial space sector that we just did not have 30 years ago.
--:-- Chris Davenport: So when the rocket goes up, I'm thinking of the rocket going up into the air. And for whatever reason, I can see in my brain the rocket has NASA written on the side of it.
--:-- Chris Davenport: You're saying the rockets will be owned by private companies. Is it going to have like SpaceX written on the side instead of NASA?
--:-- Chris Davenport: Well, it depends on which rocket and depends on which mission. In the Artemis program, the program going to the moon, you have a mix of the old and the new.
--:-- Chris Davenport: The rocket that will take off from Earth is NASA's rocket. It's called the Space Launch System. It is owned and operated by NASA and is built by taxpayers.
--:-- Chris Davenport: The rocket, or the spacecraft rather, that will meet up with the astronauts in orbit around the moon and then take them down to the surface and then take them back off the surface, that will be a commercial spacecraft.
--:-- Chris Davenport: And that's what's so interesting, and you see the evolution of these programs and the Artemis moon missions, they're sort of combining both types of systems.
--:-- Chris Davenport: Do you think there's any danger in the private sector playing such a large role in space travel and spaceflight, working so closely with NASA?
--:-- Chris Davenport: Yeah, I mean, you've got a lot of power right now in the hands of a few companies, and that's a concern.
--:-- Chris Davenport: I mean, particularly if those companies were to go away, that capability, which NASA needs, would be lost.
--:-- Chris Davenport: Part of the problem is that it's dominated in large part by SpaceX. SpaceX is the only way that NASA is able to fly its astronauts to the International Space Station.
--:-- Chris Davenport: For a long time, we were unable to do that. I mean, the space shuttle had retired in 2011, and NASA was forced to rely on Russia to fly its astronauts to the space station.
--:-- Chris Davenport: And now SpaceX does it. As I mentioned earlier, NASA had also awarded a contract to Boeing to do this, to create some incentive to create a competition between the two companies and to have a backup in case something happened to SpaceX.
--:-- Chris Davenport: But Boeing has not been able to deliver. They have not been able to fly astronauts, leaving SpaceX as the sole provider.
--:-- Chris Davenport: So I think NASA would really like to have Boeing on board, charging ahead, competing with SpaceX, because when you have competition, it's not just to drive down the price. It will increase efficiencies and safety and redundancy and all of that.
--:-- Chris Davenport: We want more competition. We want two landers. And it means that you have reliability. You have backups. It benefits NASA. It benefits the American people.
--:-- Noelle King: Support for today's show comes from Adio. What is Adio?
--:-- Chris Davenport: Adio is an AI-native customer relationship management system built specifically for the next era of companies.
--:-- Chris Davenport: They say it's extremely powerful, adapts to your unique data structures and scales with any business model.
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--:-- Noelle King: It's Today Explained. My co-pilot is Chris Davenport. He's the space reporter for The Washington Post.
--:-- Noelle King: Chris, in the first half of the show, we talked about Artemis and the mission to the moon. Let's now talk about the International Space Station, what it is and where it fits into these new NASA priorities.
--:-- Chris Davenport: The International Space Station is an orbiting laboratory, and it has been a foothold in space where people have been living continuously for more than 20 years.
--:-- Chris Davenport: And if you just think about that, that's pretty amazing that there has always been a human being in space for the past 23 years or so.
--:-- Chris Davenport: We even recycle our urine. Astronauts go up there and they conduct science experiments.
--:-- Chris Davenport: The other benefit of the International Space Station, it sort of shows the soft power diplomacy of NASA and how it binds international partners together.
--:-- Chris Davenport: I want to point out again how important it is to work together. Right now you see five nationalities here, and we are looking forward to work together.
--:-- Chris Davenport: So on the International Space Station, You have NASA working with the European Space Agency, working with Japan, and of course working with its main partner, Russia.
--:-- Chris Davenport: So even when there have been geopolitical tensions on the ground, particularly with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, that partnership in space has continued to operate.
--:-- Chris Davenport: The private sector has gotten involved with the moon missions. Is the private sector at all getting involved with the International Space Station?
--:-- Chris Davenport: They are. NASA is looking at the ISS. and realizing that it's been up there in the harsh vacuum of space for more than two decades.
--:-- Chris Davenport: And as they look ahead, particularly as they focus on the moon, NASA's saying they don't have the budget to go out and build another space station.
--:-- Chris Davenport: But they don't want to lose their hold in low Earth orbit. They want to keep astronauts going to low Earth orbit.
--:-- Chris Davenport: And so they're looking to the private sector to build commercial habitats in space that NASA would continue to use, but they would use it as a customer, one customer or potentially many other customers on these commercial space stations.
--:-- Chris Davenport: Okay, so are companies going to be bidding or approaching NASA? Are they going to be competing to build the new International Space Station? How will this work?
--:-- Chris Davenport: Yeah, that's right. NASA has already had a competition. They had the first round.
--:-- Chris Davenport: Private companies have until February 12th to submit a design protocol to DOC and eventually crash the space station in a safe space on Earth.
--:-- Chris Davenport: You have Blue Origin. Again, Jeff Bezos' space company is leading the effort on one side with some other partner companies and a company called NanoRacks on the other side and Voyager Space that are receiving tens of or hundreds of millions of dollars to build their commercial space stations.
--:-- Chris Davenport: We as a country can't have a gap in terms of capability in low Earth orbit. So it's really important that we commercialize low-Earth orbit in anticipation of the ISS being offline as early as 2030.
--:-- Chris Davenport: There's another company called Axiom Space that actually begun building their space station even before this.
--:-- Chris Davenport: We competed for a contract with NASA. We won that back in January 2020.
--:-- Chris Davenport: And from there, we've been working on developing the world's first commercial space station.
--:-- Chris Davenport: We will assemble it attached to the International Space Station starting in late 2024.
--:-- Chris Davenport: They're based in Houston and hope within a couple of years to send up a module that would actually connect with the International Space Station so they can test it and see how it works.
--:-- Chris Davenport: And then eventually it would detach and become a free flyer and they would build on that.
--:-- Noelle King: What would an international space station built by private companies look like? Is it going to be nicer?
--:-- Chris Davenport: I think so. I mean, I think, yeah. I mean, Axiom, for example, has hired this French architect, and they want the design to be much more modern and to the extent that it can be comfortable and plush.
--:-- Chris Davenport: Whereas the ISS is you know if you been to a federal office building here in Washington D it functioning but not very stylish.
--:-- Chris Davenport: And a commercial station I think, would be more stylish. There would be an emphasis on greater views of Earth.
--:-- Chris Davenport: So, Axiom talks about having these big windows, and so does Blue Origin, because I think that's part of what you do.
--:-- Chris Davenport: Now, the ISS does have a cupola where astronauts do spend a lot of time, But they're there primarily to do science and research, not to stargaze.
--:-- Chris Davenport: But I think if you have a commercial company that may have some space tourists go up there, they're going to maximize comfort and the views of space.
--:-- Chris Davenport: Which, you know, if you talk to any astronaut, they say those views of Earth from space are really profound.
--:-- Chris Davenport: But this newer plusher model of an ISS, its main task would still be serving NASA's interests.
--:-- Chris Davenport: There's no competition over who's in charge of it? Well, the commercial company would be in charge of it. It's their space station.
--:-- Noelle King: Wow. Yeah. And NASA would use it and rent space on it and be one customer of many customers and want to send up its astronauts to do research.
--:-- Chris Davenport: But you might have astronauts from other countries want to do this. Other countries, say, that are not partners on the International Space Station who want to go up.
--:-- Chris Davenport: You might have scientists from universities. You might want to have space tourists, as I mentioned.
--:-- Chris Davenport: You might want to have film production companies that want to film a really cool scene. I mean, there's talk that Tom Cruise actually at some point would go to the International Space Station.
--:-- Chris Davenport: I feel the need, the need for speed. And you could see more marketing, TV commercials filmed in space, that sort of thing.
--:-- Noelle King: I'm not anti-private business. I'm, in a lot of ways, very pro-business. But I do wonder, I do wonder about Elon Musk being the one who has the controller. or frankly, any CEO of any company having control over all of this, making the decisions about all of this, while NASA rents out a couple of rooms.
--:-- Chris Davenport: You've been covering space for a long time. You also strike me as a very level-headed reporter.
--:-- Chris Davenport: Do you think that we, society, lose something when space travel, when space exploration, when hanging out in low-Earth orbit goes totally private?
--:-- Chris Davenport: You know, NASA, it's there for the taxpayer. It's there for the purpose of the United States and for the country.
--:-- Chris Davenport: These missions, you know, during the early days, you think of, you know, John Glenn and Neil Armstrong and all these astronauts. They were, you know, almost in a way like soldiers going off to combat and carrying the flag.
--:-- Chris Davenport: And it meant something to put an American flag on the moon. And now opening up to commercial interests, you wonder if space travel is in a way losing its dignity.
--:-- Chris Davenport: And, you know, particularly if all of a sudden you've got marketing and advertising. Too much garbage in your face?
--:-- Chris Davenport: There's plenty of space out in space. B&L Starliners leaving each day.
--:-- Chris Davenport: We think of space in this expanse, this sort of global commons for all of humankind now being taken over by corporations.
--:-- Chris Davenport: I think that is concerning.
--:-- Chris Davenport: Other people, though, would say that that's a sort of natural evolution of things, that government pioneered all sorts of travel, like commercial aviation, for example.
--:-- Chris Davenport: and now it's just a routine part of our lives and we're able to go where we want and that's just the price of business and the commercial industry has shown that it can move faster and it can be better in a lot of ways than the government which is you know as perhaps it should be buried under these layers of bureaucracy where a company can be much more efficient.
--:-- Chris Davenport: But you do wonder if there shouldn't be a better balance of the two somehow.
--:-- Chris Davenport: But I do think with the commercialization of space, you are losing those early days and the sort of probity and the sort of nostalgia that we had for that era.
--:-- Chris Davenport: It's almost like, you know, where have you gone, John Glenn? Because we don't have that anymore with whether it's Elon or Jeff or Richard Branson or any of them.
--:-- Chris Davenport: I mean, it's just markedly different.
--:-- Chris Davenport: It also strikes me that space, space travel, space exploration wasn't ultimately profitable enough for NASA.
--:-- Chris Davenport: This is expensive stuff and the return on it is, you know, open to interpretation.
--:-- Chris Davenport: Did you ever manage to ask any of these big CEOs, like, how are you going to make money off of this? That's the big question.
--:-- Chris Davenport: At what point do we sort of go into the tipping point where there is a self-sustaining space economy where it can stand on its own.
--:-- Chris Davenport: And when I say that, I mean without NASA or really the Pentagon as well, because, you know, the Pentagon has enormous interests in space and also relies on all of these companies and gives them millions, if not billions of dollars in contracts.
--:-- Chris Davenport: But when do we get to the point where it's no longer driven by the government. And these companies aren't dependent on the government.
--:-- Chris Davenport: And it is clear that we are not there yet. And it is unclear whether we will ever get there.
--:-- Chris Davenport: We want to go far beyond the NASA requirements and actually be able to put enough payload on the moon with enough frequency that you could actually have a permanently occupied moon base.
--:-- Chris Davenport: That's the next really big threshold from Apollo is have an actual moon base.
--:-- Chris Davenport: But whether that model will continue as we move out, you know, from low Earth orbit to the moon, and if there's, you know, any kind of economic activity on and around the moon, that remains to be seen.
--:-- Noelle King: Journalist Chris Davenport, his book is The Space Barons.
--:-- Noelle King: Victoria Chamberlain produced today's show and Matthew Collette edited.
--:-- Noelle King: Laura Bullard fact-checked and Patrick Boyd engineered.
--:-- Noelle King: I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained.
