Thoughts on the Artemis Program

As a moon firster who sees returning to the moon as the first step to making humanity a spacefaring civilization, I must be thrilled with the … possibly soon launch of the SLS.  Right?  Well, I’ve always been lukewarm towards the Artemis Program.  And I think the main reason is the SLS.  Don’t get me wrong, the SLS is a fantastic, gorgeous rocket and everyone who worked on it should be proud, and I do have the primal “Big Rocket Cool” feeling.  But I think the SLS is the wrong way to get to where I want humanity to go.

They say that the SLS will send the next person to the moon, which is nice, but I don’t want just a couple of people bouncing around on the moon.  I want a permanently crewed base which grows into a colony.  Yes, being alive when people are on the moon will be great, but I’d much rather be alive when the first human is born on the moon.  And this one mission every year – maybe – doesn’t seem to be the best way to go about that.

Over the last decade or so, my view of big rockets has dimmed.  Yes, “Big Rocket Cool,” but I’ve started thinking that we could probably achieve more using the “small” rockets we have than waiting years, or decades, for the big rockets.  Like, it’s tough accurately comparing rockets with how much they can launch and at what price, but let’s say the SLS will launch 10X what a Falcon 9 can launch.  But for the price of one SLS, you could probably buy two or three Falcon 9s and launch each of them ten or fifteen times.  Even if you just launch one Falcon 9 a month, you could easily get more mass into space in the year(s) between SLS launches. 

If everything goes as planned, the next humans to land on the moon will happen in 2025 with Artemis III.  That would be fantastic.  But the next landing would be Artemis V in 2028, maybe.  And who knows how many missions there will be beyond that.  Just given the costs, I expect the SLS to fly fewer times than the Saturn V.  And you can’t have a permanently crewed base – let alone a colony – with so few flights.  What I expect is that other entities will have separate, more sustainable programs that will take far more people to the moon.  That path of lunar exploration is what excites me.  Like, these other programs will be the featured movie while the Artemis Program will be the five-minute cartoon at the beginning of it.  Still entertaining, but not the main attraction.