[Global Times special reporter Chen Yang]The editor says:In order to “secure America’s lead in a new round of lunar landing competition”, NASA’s chief executive officer Daffy suddenly announced on the 20th that due to a serious delay in the development of the lunar lander, NASA will reopen the moon lander development bidding, calling for new solutions from other companies. This move sparked a wave of waves in the United States: what happened to the U.S. “Alchemy” manned moon landing program?
Why is the moon landing difficult?
CNN stated on the 21st that Duffy believes that the development of Musk's SpaceX's lunar lander is lagging behind, which directly threatens the repeatedly delayed "Artemis 3" manned lunar landing mission to the moon. Completed in 2027. NASA's goal of maintaining a leading position in human return missions to the moon is being challenged as China plans to achieve a manned landing on the moon by 2030.
According to reports, the Artemis manned lunar landing program is the core of the United States '"Return to the Moon" project. Different from the "direct launch" model in the US "Apollo" manned lunar landing program in the 1960s, in which the "Saturn 5" rocket directly sent the "Apollo" spacecraft into the earth-moon transfer orbit, the "Artemis" plan to fly to the moon is quite complicated: a new generation of "Orion" manned spacecraft carrying four astronauts and the lunar lander are launched in two separate launches, each going to orbit the moon. After they completed their on-orbit docking, two astronauts on the lunar mission entered the lunar lander, and the other two astronauts stayed in the Orion spacecraft and continued to fly around the moon; after the lunar lander made a soft landing on the lunar surface, the two astronauts who landed on the moon began a week-long lunar survey, and then took the upper upgrade of the lander to return to lunar orbit and dock with the Orion spacecraft; After all the astronauts were finally transferred to the spacecraft, the spacecraft abandoned the lander and upgraded to perform the mission of returning to Earth.
The "USA Today" website stated that the reason why the "Artemis" manned lunar landing program adopted such a complex "flying to the moon" model was due to the United States 'grand plan for the program: NASA not only wanted to pass the "Artemis" plan to send American astronauts to the moon, but also plans to build a "portal" space station in lunar orbit to provide transit services for subsequent lunar and Mars exploration missions. Considering that in the future, all U.S. deep space manned spacecraft will go to the "Gateway" space station in lunar orbit for transfer and replenishment, the "Artemis" plan to abandon the "direct launch" mode of the "Apollo" program and choose the "separate launch" and "on-orbit docking" mode from the beginning. It is a logical "one-step" approach.
Overall, the Lunar Landing Plan involves three core components: the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket carrying the mission, the Lunar Landing Ship carrying the astronauts and the Lunar Landing Ship carrying the lunar landing mission. But these three components currently experience varying degrees of technical failure and excessive costs, resulting in repeated delays in the progress of the Lunar Landing Ship (SLS) program. However, the Lunar Landing Ship and the Lunar Landing Ship have already completed the reliability verification and technical combination exercises in the Lunar Landing Mission in November 2022 and plan to complete the Lunar Landing with astronauts on the Lunar Landing Ship in 2026, which is now far from “reachable” by the SpaceX responsible lunar lander.
Despite a lot of criticism, due to time and funding constraints, the overall design of the "Miss Alchemist" program is no longer possible to modify, in order to ensure that the U.S. manned moon landing schedule is no longer delayed, the progression of the lunar lander is especially crucial.
According to SpaceX's plan, the lunar lander will be modified from the "Starship" spacecraft. It will first be launched into low Earth orbit for standby, and then launch multiple "Starship" spacecraft fully loaded with fuel to dock with it, and pass complex on-orbit fuel. After refueling, go to lunar orbit.
Several U.S. media reports stressed that humans have no successful experience with low-temperature fuels on orbit at the moment, given that these fuels are easily volatile, so the exact amount of "Starcraft" spacecraft to bet on orbit is also unknown.SpaceX optimisticly estimates that "only a dozen are needed" and a former NASA official told CNN that it could take up to 20 to 40 times on orbit.
More troublingly, the development of the current "Star Ship" is also far behind the plan. According to the agreement signed by SpaceX and NASA, the lunar lander should have completed the verification tests in April 2025. but currently as a prototype "Star Ship" spacecraft is still in the starting phase, since 2025 the second generation "Star Ship" spacecraft has suffered three flight failures, completing only a few successful suborbital trials.
In addition, the lunar lander modified from the third-generation "Starship" spacecraft is not only responsible for sending astronauts to the lunar surface, but also ignites and takes off in a lunar surface environment full of lunar dust without a launch pad. This is also a very high engineering challenge. Therefore, it is widely believed that it is almost impossible for SpaceX to complete the development and preparation of the lunar lander by 2027 as scheduled.
Reuters said the NASA advisory team estimated that the project undertaken by SpaceX could be completed "several years later" than originally planned.
Can the "Blue Moon" shoulder important responsibilities
CNN said that Duffy recently publicly stated that Blue Origin can take over from SpaceX in the development of the lunar lander. It is not for no reason that NASA has high hopes for Blue Origin. According to reports, in the 2021 NASA-initiated bidding for the lunar lander project, a total of three teams participated: Blue Origin took the lead, with several traditional aerospace companies such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper; a "national team" composed of traditional aerospace companies; a "small business team" led by Dynetics and composed of 25 subcontractors; and SpaceX participated alone.
At the time, it was widely believed that the strongest "National Team" was the most likely to win the Moon Lander proposed by the National Team, named "Comprehensive Lander" (ILV), consisting of the three parts of the transfer level (developed by Northrop Grumman), the descent level (developed by Blue Origin) and upgrade (developed by Lockheed Martin), which were separately launched by the "New Glenn" or "Fire God" carrier rocket, completed assembly on the orbit or "Gateway" space station. NASA for the "National Team" proposed the Moon Lander's overall technical program, but questioned its "immature propulsion and communication systems, and the ability of third-party suppliers", the final project failed in the bidding "Lunar Land
SpaceX’s most sophisticated and radical moon landing technology program, which caused much controversy in the U.S. space community at the time, suggests that most U.S. analysts believe that SpaceX could win the contract not because of its more advanced or more mature technology, but because of a much lower offer than its rivals: SpaceX’s bid ($2.9 billion) is only half the equivalent of the “National Team” ($6 billion).
Blue Origin also filed a complaint with the U.S. government accountability agency for this, but was subsequently rejected. Blue Origin does not die of this. NASA proposed a modified moon lander scheme in the Alphabet 5 mission in 2023, known as Blue Moon MK2's Blue Origin company's manned moon lander eventually targeted.
CNN said Blue Origin said it was "ready to provide support" in response to Duffy's recent proposal. Although from a technical perspective, the "Blue Moon" MK2 lander can fully meet the needs of the United States for manned lunar missions, the US "Space News" website said on the 20th that the lander is currently aimed at the launch of the early 1930s. The development progress of the "Artemis 5" mission is unlikely to exceed that of SpaceX. According to reports, another option for Blue Origin is based on the modification of the unmanned version of the "Blue Moon" MK1 lunar lander. According to the "Space News" website, according to current plans, Blue Origin will launch the "Blue Moon" MK1 lander for the first time as early as this year, and it is expected to land on the south pole of the moon. At the same time, Blue Origin is also building a second "Blue Moon" MK1 lander, and plans to deliver the "Viper" lunar rover developed by NASA to the lunar surface in 2027. Although the production supporting facilities for the "Blue Moon" MK1 lander are basically complete, Blue Origin needs to realize the modification from an unmanned lander to a manned lander and complete relevant reliability tests in the next two years. Time is very tight.
Musk: “SpaceX’s progress is like lightning”
Responding to NASA's actions, SpaceX CEO Musk responded,"Compared with other companies, SpaceX's progress is like lightning." The Starship will eventually complete the entire lunar mission."
The US media noted that with the exception of Blue Origin, hardly any other US space company was able to immediately come up with the moon landing plan, let alone be able to catch up with SpaceX before it was completed.
Duffy said that in addition to SpaceX and Blue Origin, NASA may also choose to open up competition opportunities to US space companies that have not signed contracts. But only Lockheed Martin responded in a statement that it is "conducting important technical and planning analysis of a manned lunar lander" and working with cross-industry teams to respond to NASA needs. CNN said Dynetics, which bid for the lunar lander project with Blue Origin and SpaceX in 2021, has not yet responded.
In fact, neither Lockheed Martin nor Dynetics are unable to undertake the development of such a heavyweight space project as the lunar lander alone, let alone face clear time and financial constraints. Even if they want to jointly develop with other companies, it will take a long time to organize and coordinate, so it is difficult to meet NASA's requirements.
Some analysts believe that the current U.S. is in the "moon landing plan delay crisis", essentially the decline in the overall U.S. space development capacity, and the negative consequences of NASA's continued cuts in related fields. For example, the fundamental reason NASA abandoned the backup program on the moon lander project is that the U.S. Congress will reduce the budget of the project $ 3.2 billion to $ 8.5 billion in early 2021, NASA can not say that the two companies are funded to research and development at the same time, even supporting the high offer "national teams" can not do, only "only stake" to choose the lowest offer SpaceX.
In addition, in addition to the troublesome lunar lander, the current extravehicular suits supporting the "Artemis" manned lunar landing program are also facing delays in progress. Therefore, many American media believe that the "Artemis 3" mission is difficult. It will be completed on schedule in 2027.
However, analysts have suggested that this bad situation is a good thing for SpaceX or other U.S. space companies, and may have extra time to develop and test the moon lander.