You might’ve lost this news item in the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season, but NASA recently announced the postponement of the Artemis III crewed mission to the moon. The new target date for the landing is “mid-2027 at the earliest.”
As a science fiction writer, I have a mix of thoughts
Part of me is disappointed, of course. Odds are you share my excitement about space travel, the exploration of new frontiers, and the potential to learn more about our solar system and ultimately the universe. I also read my copy of the late Jerry Pournelle’s A Step Farther Out cover to cover a dozen times. I know there are vast quantities of the industrial metals needed for a high-tech standard of living and enough hydrocarbons, nitrogen compounds, and water to support millions-no, billions-of human lives in our solar system. Postponing the Artemis mission feels like a shrinking of our society’s purpose.
On the other hand, I’m not surprised. Pournelle provides part of the explanation for this response to. Pournelle’s iron law of bureaucracy says:
NASA in the 1950s and early 60s had a goal. “We will send a man to the moon in this decade, return him safely to the Earth.” (FYI, I live less than five miles from where John F. Kennedy gave that speech.) But after that mission was accomplished, NASA has been scrambling for a purpose. Skylab in the ’70s. The Space Shuttle a.k.a. a rickety space truck that managed to support some good science, but ultimately went around in circles before it got shelved after killing two crews. Subsequent plans, Orion, Artemis, and other infrastructure for Mars trips, seem to be make-work for scientist and engineers, rather than any kind of planned purposeful further of America and humann efforts in space.
Why did NASA lose the thread?
It pains me to write that. I’ve met many NASA scientists and even an astronaut or two. I know they are committed to expanding the human presence in space.
The blame, as in most things, is with the politicians.
Space scientists and engineers want to do that Buck Rogers stuff. Explore the solar system. Mankind cannot stay in the cradle, etc.
Politicians don’t.
Politicians want to increase wealth and power. Good politicians want that increase to go to their countries. Bad politicians want that increase to go to themselves and their cronies. But in either case, the politicians don’t care about absolute increases, but relative ones. Better to be rich in hell than poor in heaven.
With that mindset, Buck Rogers dreams take a backseat.
Even the politicians who seem to be on-board with the space program are primarily interested in it if it serves an immediate national interest. In his moon speech, JFK repeatedly voiced the real motivation for the space program: the USA’s competition with the Soviet Union.
After winning the moon race, the space program had served its purpose. Time to shelve it. At least the last working Saturn V rocket was preserved instead of falling to pieces like the statue of Ozymandias.
The motivation for the Artemis program is the same, just updated by %s/USSR/China. The money quote from the article about the postponement: “Commenting on the adjusted timeline, NASA administrator Bill Nelson said the mid-2027 goal ‘will be well ahead of the Chinese government’s announced intention’ of landing Chinese astronauts on the Moon by 2030.”
How Can We Get To Space?
But if we can’t look to governments to get the human race into space, who can do it? And why?
I have the answer. You may not like it, but I have it. My blog post series starting with Religion and Space Settlement, Part I might be a few years old, but the math still holds, as does the reasoning behind it.