The Legacy Aerospace Giants won Tuesday when the US Senate passed President Trump’s budget settlement bill that will attract billions more for NASA’s flagship Artemis program.
The $10 billion addition to Artemis Architecture includes funding for additional space launch system rockets and orbital stations around the moon called Gateway, and is a denunciation to critics who wanted to see alternative technologies being used instead. Among those critics were SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, who proposed to him as the next NASA administrator.
There are no indications that Musk and Trump’s sour relationship is recovering. If Trump signs the bill, the fallout that began after the sudden revocation of President Isaacman’s appointment could likely continue if it doesn’t escalate.
In particular, Musk aims to be Space Launch System (SLS) rockets because they are completely consumables. Unlike the SpaceX family of Rockets, which are all designed to be reusable, SLS is only available for one-time use. Just as Musk is back in 2020, that means “a billion dollar rocket explodes” every time it is released. Still, it could have been an understatement. Recent figures from NASA’s Watchdog show that production costs are close to $2.5 billion each.
A total of approximately $24 billion has been poured into SLS production so far. This was primarily funded to consortiums of aerospace primes, such as Boeing, L3 Harris’ Aerojet Rocketdyne and Northrop Grumman.
During a recent confirmation hearing in the Senate, Isaacman questioned the large sums. He confirmed that he was using SLS for the next two Artemis missions, but ultimately said he didn’t think the rocket would be “a long-term way to get to the moon and Mars, and with a lot of frequency.”
Congress, and Trump, have decided to push the bill up first if he decides to sign the law. Approximately $4.1 billion of the total $10 billion added to the documentation will be directed towards Artemis Missions 4 and 5 additional SLS rockets. Meanwhile, around $2.6 billion will be directed towards the completion of the gateway station.
In particular, NASA’s fiscal year budget request submitted in May proposed “phasing out the space launch system and Orion spacecraft after the Artemis III mission is completed.” This new fund will fly in the face of that proposal. This was submitted in June before masks and Trump’s official fallout.
The new funds include $700 million for the new Mars communications orbit, $1.25 billion for additional operations on the International Space Station, and $325 million for SpaceX for the development of a spacecraft to remove the ISS at the end of the decade. (The total award for that out-of-orbit spaceship is $843 million.)
