The Costs of NASA's Modern Moon Mission Are Really Adding Up - CNET

Commentary: Let's talk about the fiscal footprint of NASA's latest lunar endeavor, Artemis.

NASA's Artemis I moon mission is still a go, having slowly but surely waddled through its final testing phase.

The Artemis I Space Launch System rocket, topped by the Orion spacecraft, stand tall at launch complex 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on June 14.

NASA's Artemis moon rocket, slated to touch space for the very first time in 2022, was supposed to launch in 2017. .

It was supposed to encompass four missions, each with a price tag estimated a decade ago at $500 million -- but a 2021 audit now projects a cost of $4.1 billion per launch.

This audit is the second of two conducted for the program, and according to the document, was motivated by the fact that Artemis is the agency's "most ambitious and costly activity." It states that Artemis "faces schedule, procurement, technical and funding risks," and therefore looked at NASA documents, systems, policies and procedures pertaining to schedule, cost, budget, operations, and other such things to evaluate those risks.

According to the audit, those four launches at a projected $4.1 billion a pop would be on top of the about $40 billion already spent to build Artemis equipment -- items like the rocket itself, known as the Space Launch System, and the Orion spacecraft, which will hold important devices for science exploration. .

Under the Trump administration, NASA set a goal for the first Artemis crewed trip to the moon -- mission three -- for late 2024 instead of the program's initial hope of 2028, which was "just not good enough," Vice President Mike Pence said during a meeting of the National Space Council in 2019. .

"Since NASA has already programmed the lunar landing mission for 2028," Serrano continued, "why does it suddenly need to speed up the clock by four years, time that is needed to carry out a successful program from a science and safety perspective?".

The closest we get to an "all-in-all" within the audit is "when considering the $40 billion already spent on the Artemis mission from [fiscal years] 2012 to 2020, the total projected cost through FY 2025 becomes $93 billion.".

In other words, it's probably going to take at least around $93 billion to bring humanity back to the moon via Artemis.

Though what we do know is that NASA's moon expedition has cost billions upon billions of extra dollars, years upon years of extra time and, according to the agency's former deputy administrator Lori Garver, breath after breath of wasted words.

"We had things to do with that money that could have gotten us much farther," Garver said, suggesting that the $500 million per launch could've been allocated for things like astrobiology studies, which help us understand where to search for life in the cosmos?

"Whenever I tried to push for more Earth science," such as studies related to climate change, she said, "I would often get told by the Hill" -- that is, by members of Congress -- "'that's not NASA's job.

Though the mission still has a few more tests to take care of, Mike Sarafin, Artemis mission manager at NASA headquarters, said in a press conference last week that celebratory hugs and handshakes were spread on Monday. .

"It firmly establishes Orion and SLS as our transportation system for crew and cargo for the Artemis program," he said a day after the team's wet dress rehearsal success.

Once estimated to cost a total of $10 billion, the SLS has left a hole of over $20 billion in taxpayer money dedicated to NASA's ambitious lunar mission and it has taken much (much) longer to complete it's testing.

Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, NASA's Artemis launch director, remained hopeful in early April, saying that "this is a test, and the purpose of the test is to fully understand our systems.".

The Space Launch System vehicle has earned a disparaging name among critics of the Artemis program: The "Senate" Launch System.

When asked for comment on these high SLS construction costs, Boeing told CNET, "When adjusted for inflation, NASA has developed SLS for a quarter of the cost of the Saturn V and half the cost of the Space Shuttle," and "SLS, the Orion spacecraft and Exploration Ground Systems necessary for the Artemis missions have consumed less than the average annual spending on Space Shuttle operations, which is the sustained human space flight investment level for the system they were intended to succeed."

"I do think there are people who maybe believed it could happen," Garver said of Artemis' initial timeline and budget

It's cost $5 billion so far and is arguably nearing the same point as Artemis' SLS, if it's not further along

If Starship does find success quicker than NASA's SLS, Garver suggests it might be the case that Musk's private space organization could light the way for future moon missions -- it's already poised to help with Artemis III's crewed mission and has garnered a lot of praise for its Falcon 9 successes, though notably, Falcon 9 trips have only gone as far as low Earth orbit

Further, it would be remiss to ignore the feeling that NASA's intrinsic value transcends what private space companies have right now

Artemis I's uncrewed mission will be followed by several others, including a crewed mission that takes the first woman and first person of color to the moon and later others to build lunar space stations, bases, something called the "Lunanet" (think of it as a moon-based internet) and even pave the way for Mars missions down the line