Improving Artemis | Is It Really Sustainable?

nasa is returning humans to the moon this decade with its artemis program for many of us including myself this will be the first time in our lives that humans have stood on the surface of more than just the earth itself but artemis is about much more than just planting a flag it's about the sustainable return to the moon sustainable meaning long-term visitations and settlements with near permanent human presence think of artemis as setting up a sort of international space station but on the lunar surface in my first video we compared the three proposals nasa is considering for bringing humans to the moon as part of their artemis program if you're interested in my analysis of these vehicles go check it out and it's probably a good idea to watch that one first if you haven't seen it already while researching for my hls video i discovered some things about the current artemis plan that made me somewhat worried about the sustainability and therefore the success of the program so that's what we're going to cover [Music] today [Music] so this video will have three main sections in the first we will examine the artemis program as it is currently planned then we will propose some realistic ideas for improving the sustainability of the artemis program and finally we will compare the strengths and weaknesses of the current plan with some of the ideas we discuss so let's start here it has been 50 years since humans have been to the moon and if artemis isn't successful like we all hope it will be it could be another 50 years or more before humans decide to make a third attempt a huge part of ensuring the longevity of a program is its political support which artemis currently has but apollo enjoyed political support too until it did it so what makes some programs lose their support and others such as the iss program keep it strong for so many years for me four main things come to mind the first is pork for better or worse this is the ugly side of all this but look at it this way the government could be spending its money on a lot worse things than high paying engineering and manufacturing jobs spread across the country and it's the reality of how anything for space gets money the next is commercial involvement the iss has evolved in many ways to become a commercial platform in space it's still a government laboratory at its core but many companies have built business cases off of the iss such as nanoracks maidenspace axiom and even spacex the third is international involvement it makes the program more popular among politicians and citizens alike and the important thing is it makes it harder to cancel because cancellation would mean flaking on commitments to partner nations and as you can see nasa is doing a great job with artemis because it has all three of these covered so far but the fourth and final key to continued support is one that's often overlooked and this is visible results relative to costs let me break down this metric by comparing the iss and the apollo program both the iss and apollo programs advanced space technology significantly but these are subtleties that aren't really apparent or important to congress or the public at large in the long run sadly here's what is the apollo program got us the amazing moon landing which inspires the world to this day and then they repeated it five more times in total humans spent just 12 and a half days on the moon during apollo that's total not conducting science or anything 12 and a half days over the course of the 1279 days from the first landing to the final takeoff on the moon that's less than one percent time usage for over 200 billion dollars the iss on the other hand has had constant human presence since november of the year 2000 making for about 7 500 days of uninterrupted human presence at the time of recording this video not only that the iss has had more than 242 people stay on board from 19 different countries that's more than 200 people taking pictures giving interviews ted talks posting on social media writing books and countless other ways of spreading the story of the iss program compare this to the 12 apollo moonwalkers all of which came from the same country now this isn't even to mention that the iss was built out of several dozens of launches and is still the focus of several launches a year from several launch vehicles from several nations to this very day while apollo only had nine launches that went to the moon long story short no one wants to be the congress or the president who puts an end to a highly visible and successful program that only represents a fraction of an annual budget this is how the iss program has survived decades and countless administrations so if the apollo program as incredible as it was is a good example of a program that proved unsustainable let's use that as a baseline to see how the current artemis plan compares artemis and apollo have several peripheral launches that are very important and super cool to a space fans but right now i'm focusing on the flagship missions of both the apollo program began in 1960 and the first scheduled launch we'll take a look at was in 1967 with the crude test flight of the apollo command and service module carried to earth orbit by a saturn 1b rocket of course what came to pass was the apollo 1 tragedy in which three lives were lost later that same year nasa launched the saturn 5 uncrewed for the first time the objectives of the apollo 1 mission would be successfully carried out the next year in 1968 with apollo 7 again launching on a saturn 1b later in 1968 nasa launched apollo 8 which is the first crude saturn v launch taking astronauts on a trip around the moon 1969 was a big one for nasa they started with apollo 9 which was like apollo 8 but included testing of the lunar module then apollo 10 took it one step further and acted as a final rehearsal for the crude landing now fully confident in their system nasa successfully landed people on the moon with apollo 11 on july 20th 1969 later that year apollo 12 would land the second batch of people on the surface of the moon four saturn fives all with people on them to the moon in one year it's crazy in 1970 apollo 13 flew but didn't reach the moon surface due to a system failure that thankfully didn't result in the loss of a crew and then there were two more missions to the surface in 71 and 72 with the program ending in 1973. now let's look at the artemis plan as it currently stands artemis was formalized in 2019 but i'm starting the timeline in 2012 development on the sls rocket as we know today began in 2012 and it was assigned with the missions of sending the orion crew vehicle to the moon these missions em-1 2 and 3 are now known as artemis 1 2 and 3. nasa plans to launch artemis 1 in 2022 next year and the odds look good for this happening now artemis 1 is an uncrewed launch and it just orbits the moon with the orion capsule and returns next up would be artemis 2 the following year which would be the first crude launch of sls and mark the return of humans to cis lunar space but still the humans wouldn't be going down to the surface then in 2024 artemis iii will use the hls to take humans to the surface for the first time since 1972. from there nasa would continue with the once a year cadence for human surface missions again all this is subject to change and as i've said before humans landing on the moon in 2024 is all but impossible at this point i think a more likely timeline that's still ambitious goes something like this there's a bit more time between the first two launches and then hls isn't ready until at least 2026 so astronauts go visit the gateway in 2025 or something regardless i'm sure some differences have already stuck out to you for one thing artemis has spent longer on development nasa launched the saturn v rocket and the command and service module seven years after the inception of apollo and would complete the trifecta of rocket capsule and lander in year eight artemis on the other hand is already in year 10 and we're still about a year away from the first launch of the rocket and capsule and we haven't even down selected which landers will be developed but this isn't quite as bad as it seems though because artemis has had way less funding than apollo to work with spending about 50 billion so far while apollo spent over a hundred billion to get to a similar point but to be completely fair the development of apollo was much more rigorous they had to construct all the infrastructure we're using to this day even for the artemis program from the ground up the launch pads the science center the test stands all while developing multiple rockets that weren't built out of parts of previous rockets one of which is more capable than even the sls block 1a and they did this all at the dawn of rocket technology with no computers but i digress another thing you'll notice is the pace of apollo is faster launching as many as four missions to the moon in one year but averaging around two artemis is aiming for a pace of about one landing per year now this too isn't as bad as it seems for artemis at first glance because it's important to keep in mind that the artemis surface missions are going to be a lot more effective than the apollo surface missions the stays are going to be much longer starting at about a week and growing from there and they'll be bringing four astronauts down at a time after the first few missions whereas the most apollo missions stayed on the surface for two or three days and of course could only bring two astronauts down later in the video we'll actually do some hard number comparisons still it's a little disappointing that 50 years later we can't at least match the pace of apollo so what's holding us back well there's no easy way to say this it's the space launch system look i'm not a mindless orange rocket bad drone which there are a few but at the same time a lot of people in the space community have become overly protective of sls because it does get a lot of criticism but let's be honest here the cost isn't great and we'll cover that later but it isn't the main concern the cadence is you see the once a year pace of artemis missions this is only because this is the most sls can fly now there are talks that a two flight for your cadence is possible in the future but regardless one or two missions to the moon per year is quite a bottleneck and the sls is the cause of it this means that even in a distant future the most we could hope to see is like eight people going to the moon each year for a few weeks at a time that's cool for a space nerds but i'm not sure four to eight people per year qualifies as a sustainable human presence on the moon which is the goal of artemis furthermore i fear that these results could subject artemis to potential cancellation in the future as i've mentioned we need to avoid that fate as best we can so how do we improve that cadence and get more people to the moon well if sls could launch more than once per year we could have more artemis missions but it can't of course there are other rockets such as falcon 9 vulcan falcon heavy and so on that can launch with much higher cadences so why don't we just use them well we can't because there's only one capsule currently capable of supporting crude missions to the moon the orion capsule and it's just too much mass for even a falcon heavy to launch to the moon the capsule actually isn't very heavy but it has a service module that is ridiculously overweight and underpowered but that's for another video well that was a dead end seems like we're stuck with sls's slow cadence because only it is capable of taking orion to the moon and orion is our only ride but what if it wasn't recently nasa invested billions in developing two capsules capable of bringing humans to the iss in low earth orbit nasa invested about four and a half billion in starliner and 2.6 billion in crew dragon right now the only thing nasa gets out of these vehicles is astronaut delivery to the iss which is crucial of course since the shuttle's cancellation however the iss is getting quite old and is frankly starting to fall apart and it will likely not last into the 2030s it would be wise if nasa leveraged their previous investment and got more out of the commercial crew program by investing a little extra in one or each of these capsules to make them capable of supporting human flights to the moon nasa could also leverage the immense 23 billion investment into orion and spread that knowledge and technology that they developed onto other vehicles basically the orion team could assist in upgrading dragon and starliner for lunar flights so my first suggestion to improve the sustainability of artemis is to make a lunar commercial crew program there is a reason nasa has modeled every program they can off of commercial crew and cargo the clips moonlanders the hls landers lunar cargo delivery effectively the only part of artemis that is not done this way is human delivery to the moon via sos and orion it's time to let lunar crew delivery be done the same way as everything else plus it's great to have a backup we want two hls landers we wanted two capsules to bring people to the iss why not have two or three capsules to bring humans to the moon but come on you can't just make starliner and crew dragon lunar capsules right i'm probably gonna ruffle some feathers here but yeah you can i would even go as far as saying it's not that difficult relative to space stuff that is look we have made lunar capsules before over 50 years ago we are currently making a lunar capsule right now there's no magic involved in making orion the same techniques and technologies can be applied to other capsules the hard part is already out of the way starliner and crew dragon are human rated capsules that are capable of getting people through the atmosphere keeping them alive in space and throughout reentry all the way to touchdown the only changes needed are radiation shielding additional electronic redundancies bigger batteries again this is not an unknown problem it's a problem we know how to solve and have solved previously and it's trivial compared to the work already done on these capsules garrett reisman a former nasa astronaut who now works at spacex directing crew operations talked to ars technica about what it would take to upgrade dragon for lunar flights he said modifying the capsule would require some substantial but feasible changes to the spacecraft including a new communications and navigation system and he said that the heat children radiation changes would be quote straightforward and easy the hardest part of this process would be that dragon and starliner will each need a service module capable of getting them in and out of lunar orbit we'll be taking a deep dive into the service module bit in the next chapter of course the vehicles launching these capsules would also need to be human rated and look i'm really not trying to diminish the real effort it takes to human rate rockets but is this really such a huge impediment the falcon heavy which would launch the crew dragon is a rocket with a hundred percent success rate that is literally comprised entirely of human rated rockets that have flown people multiple times ula who would fly starliner is human raiding a rocket right now and is known for their reliability are we so unmotivated to return to the moon that this is too much of a hurdle to attempt clearing now he might say look i think all of this is possible but upgrading the capsules to support lunar flight creating service modules for each of them and human rating a rocket would take years and you're probably right but here's the good part we have years it's only 2021. humans aren't landing on the moon until at least 2026. that's five years right there and who says a lunar dragon or lunar starliner need to be ready for the first surface mission sls could still take care of the first few as needed look at it this way the commercial crew contracts were awarded to spacex and boeing in 2014. crew dragon completed its first test flight five years later and brought humans to the iss six years later so if it took six years to build this capsule from the ground up then five or so to add some modifications is perfectly reasonable and i just want to add falcon heavy lifted off for the first time three years ago nasa could have and should have started a program like this earlier but there's no time like the present so let's iron out what these commercial lunar vehicles would look like that way we're dealing with something a little more concrete let's start with the crew dragon since it's already operational and it's the easiest of the bunch to make work the crew dragon vehicle has an interior volume of 9.3 cubic meters a lot more than the 5.9 cubic meter interior of the apollo capsule so the size will not be an issue for carrying four astronauts the crew dragon vehicle also has a trunk with solar panels on one side and radiators on the other the trunks interior is completely empty designed for carrying unpressurized cargo to the space station this is the perfect place to put our service module but how big of a service module do we need for this we need to know how much energy or delta v our spacecraft must have to complete its mission since this capsule would be performing the same maneuvers as orion we know we need a delta v budget of at least 960 meters per second that's 480 to enter lunar orbit and 480 to leave back to earth but of course you always want a little extra in your tank so 1 000 to 1200 meters per second is probably the target here next we need to decide what engine makes sense for me two came to mind the first is spacex's very own kestrel engine the engine that powered the second stage of their first rocket the falcon 1. there are a few reasons it makes sense for one spacex likes to keep things in-house and this is their own engine it's already vacuum optimized and it's a simple pressure fed engine it runs rp1 and liquid oxygen so their pad is already outfitted for it and it only weighs 52 kilograms now the other option is a new kid on the block rocket labs vacuum rutherford which powers their electrons upper stage this engine is a lot like the kestrel but with a better isp of 343 seconds compared to the kestrel's 317 seconds think of isp as gas mileage the more the better now spacex did have plans to upgrade the kestrel's isp but they abandoned this for falcon 9 development instead the rutherford is also already vacuum optimized and uses rp-1 as well so again no ground support issues both of these engines are small and fit inside the trunk with no issues leaving plenty of room for tanks but both also provide more than enough thrust now i did all the math to figure out the right size service module for these but it doesn't really make for an entertaining youtube video so i'll spare you but feel free to play around with an online delta v calculator for yourself the dragon capsule and its trunk weighs 12 tons and a tank big enough to hold the fuel would be about 2 meters in diameters and 2 meters in height if this were made from aluminum like the rest of the vehicle it would weigh somewhere close to 300 kilograms the engines are an extra 50 kilogram so that would give the service module a dry mass of 350 kilograms let's just bump that up to 500 to be on the safe side and we'll add another half ton of extra consumables for the trip out to the moon this takes lunar dragon's dry mass up to 13 tons adding five tons of fuel which doesn't even fill our tank up all the way already gives us over a thousand meters per second of delta v regardless which engine we choose which is more than enough to complete the mission and of course you could add a bit more fuel if you felt you really needed it this brings the full mass for the lunar dragon capsule and its service module to 18 tons falcon heavy when fully expended can send anywhere from 18 to 22 tons to the moon so this is no problem it may even be able to recover the two side boosters for this launch as elon musk has said expending just the center core has a 10 payload hit which would give the falcon heavy anywhere from 16.2 to 19.8 tons to the moon in this configuration it would be great for cost and cadence to spare two falcon 9 boosters each launch if possible but not entirely necessary it's hard to estimate a price for this sort of mission but we know that a crew dragon mission to the iss is 220 million or 55 million dollars per seat now that flies on a recovered falcon 9 mission the vast majority of that price is the cost associated with the dragon itself obviously since falcon 9's don't cost that much to launch typically my guess is that this flight would cost no more than 400 million dollars or a hundred million dollars per seat to the moon now for starliner starliner is a lot more difficult to make work for this type of flight it's a bigger capsule with 11 cubic meters of space inside so its dry mass alone is 13 tons it also has a pre-existing service module with a dry mass of four and a half tons bringing the total mass up to 17 and a half tons without any fuel now having a pre-existing service module confines what we can change without needing a major redesign the good news is most of starliner service module is empty as it stands so it has room for the extra fuel necessary for the lunar mission you just need to fill that empty space with the extra tanks but the service modules omac thrusters have a very low isp of only 277 seconds also unlike the dragon's trunk the bottom of starliner service module is closed so in an abort scenario it's going to need to be capable of pulling all the added mass away in a hurry this would likely require additional abort motors to the service module increasing this weight even further now i'm not smart enough to determine how much mass this would exactly add but i'm just gonna say at least one ton of extra dry mass for the extended tanks and extra abort engines and just like with the dragon we'll give starliner another half ton of consumables to make the journey out to the moon bringing our lunar starliner's total mass to 19 tons with the low isp omac engines this would require nine tons of fuel to have enough delta v to complete the lunar mission so the full mass of a lunar star liner would be around 28 tons which is not great a vulcan heavy can't quite get this much mass to low earth orbit let alone the moon but starliner has a little known feature that could help it out it's actually designed to be launcher agnostic meaning it's capable of being launched on plenty of vehicles such as atlas vulcan and even the falcon 9 family now formatting a starliner to launch on a falcon heavy would require extra development but it would make some sense considering the falcon heavy would be human rated for the lunar dragon in this scenario so this would mean that only one new rocket would need human rating and a fully reusable falcon heavy could send this capsule and its service module to low earth orbit with no issue but it would still require a distributed launch to reach the moon meaning the capsule would wait in low earth orbit for vulcan to launch some type of centaur stage up and then dock with that stage in orbit and then fly out to the moon this in-space rendezvous setup would again require a lot of extra development and beyond the extra development this distributed launch profile would cost a bit more as well starliner already cost 360 million per flight or 90 million per seat to the iss now a fully reused falcon heavy flight wouldn't really increase that cost because the starliner currently flies on the more expensive atlas 5 rocket at the end of the day when you add up all the extra development cost of the service module distributed launch capability and falcon formatting plus the two launches instead of one i would expect a mission price of around 650 million dollars total or 160 million dollars per astronaut but that's just an educated guess so as you can see starliner isn't quite as easy to adapt for a lunar mission as crew dragon and frankly it may not be worth all of this effort but i didn't feel right leaving it out of the conversation so that's the commercial lunar crew program this of course could be expanded to any future human rated space vehicles such as the dream chaser starship and rumored crew vehicles from rocket lab and blue origin but there's one more way i can think of to get humans from earth to the moon and it may just be the best option of them all what if i told you it was possible to get humans from the surface of earth not just to lunar orbit but all the way to the surface of the moon and back home without requiring any modification or development of crew capsules without having to human rate any new launch vehicles and without starting any new programs as i covered in my last video the crew capsule whether it's orion or something else takes humans from the surface of earth out to lunar orbit and the hls takes them from lunar orbit to the surface and back where the crew capsule then returns the humans from lunar orbit all the way back to the surface of the earth what if we reversed these roles what if the crew capsule only brought people to low earth orbit and the landing system carried the people all the way out to lunar orbit down to the surface back to lunar orbit after the mission and then back to the capsule waiting for them in leo there the capsule would return the astronauts and the hls would wait for its refueling there is one hls candidate capable of doing this and that is starship let's go over how this mission would play out as i stated before we can safely assume a starship launch will cost less than 28 million dollars but since my last video we've actually gotten a bit more info on starship launch costs we now know that spacex bid the starship at close to eight million dollars to launch a trio of small sats next year for the nasa tropics mission now we don't know yet if that price point is profitable for starship but it's the hardest numbers we have for the program and it's certainly within the realm of possibility so i'll be breaking down starship flight costs with an 8 million dollar per flight as a lower bound and 28 million as an upper bound now for the mission we are going to assume the hls starship has a 90 ton total dry mass as i think would be about 20 tons less than a normal starship because it has no heat shield no body flaps no header tanks and all that but i'm gonna say it gains back around 10 tons for life support consumables and a crew compartment so first spacex would launch the hls starship to low earth orbit it would carry 10 tons of payload for the lunar surface and arrive in leo with a hundred tons of fuel next they would fill its tanks up all the way with 11 refueling flights giving the hls 9558 meters per second of delta v these 12 flights would cost somewhere between 96 and 336 million next you would have an ordinary commercial crew launch to orbit exactly like the kind we're already doing but instead of docking with the iss the dragon or starliner would dock with the hls starship and transfer the crew over a crew dragonflight costs 220 million the hls starship undocks from the capsule leaving it in low earth orbit it then carries the crew and 10 tons of payload from low earth orbit all the way out to the moon and brings it all down to the surface it'll land there with about 162 tons of fuel remaining while the lunar surface mission is being carried out spacex would then launch a normal refueling starship to leo which of course arrives with 100 tons of extra propellant another starship is then launched refueling it one time these two launches cost between 16 and 56 million dollars this starship would take a slow and efficient transfer out to geostationary transfer orbit which is just a highly elliptical earth orbit so now bringing our focus back to the moon the hls starship has shed a lot of mass for the journey back because most of the consumables have now been well consumed and it's dropped off its 10 tons of payload for the journey back the hls has a total dry mass of 85 tons rather than 100 tons and with 162 tons of propellant in its tanks it now has 3975 meters per second of delta v the hls takes off and has enough delta v to make it all the way back to gto with close to 300 meters per second of delta v to spare but this just isn't enough to make it back to the capsule in leo this is why we pre-staged the tanker in gto previously while the crews were at the moon and that tanker transfers over the roughly 65 tons of fuel needed to give the hls starship at least 2 270 meters per second of delta v to make it from geostationary transfer orbit back to their dragon capsule in leo from there their dragon capsule takes the crew safely from leo to earth as it is already done before and the hls waits in leo for the next mission so i just want to give a huge shout out to justly deserved on tick tock who helped me figure out all the delta v requirements for this mission it would not have been possible without him so please go check his page out so to review this mission architecture has a total cost of 332 to 612 million and it doesn't require the development of any upgrades or new programs and doesn't require any new rocket to be human rated if spacex is selected in the hls competition this mission is possible as soon as their lander comes online we'll break this down later but keep in mind this three to six hundred million dollar price is all inclusive from earth surface to moon surface and back it isn't just launching people to the moon's orbit which is all we've been discussing previously also instead of being bound to the high cost and slow cadence of an sls orion launch it would be bound by the low cost and high cadence of a falcon 9 crew dragon launch allowing way more annual visitations to the moon this method is also the best setup to bring more than four astronauts at a time if you wanted to take 8 or 12 astronauts simply launch a few more dragons or starliners only adding the cost of these relatively cheap leo launches so now we have discussed a few methods for getting astronauts to the moon we started with the current artemis plan which uses the sls rocket and orion capsule to ferry astronauts to lunar orbit where the hls lander takes them down to the surface and i came away very concerned that only bringing four to eight astronauts per year may not qualify as sustainable so next we looked at a lunar commercial crew program where a lunar modified crew dragon capsule flies to lunar orbit on a human rated falcon heavy rocket where the crew again takes the hls lander down to the surface this could greatly improve the cadence and cost of missions but it requires additional funding to develop finally we discussed using the hls starship to take astronauts from low earth orbit to the surface of the moon and back again drastically improving the cadence and cost while requiring no new funding or development now that we have some options let's take a look to see how these different methods of delivering humans to the moon would impact the results of the artemis project but in order to compare these new ideas to the current sls and orion method we must take a journey down a rabbit hole that all space fans try their best to avoid what is the cost of an sls emission well to make a long story short here it is 1.46 billion to 2.7 billion dollars per launch according to the best of my research capabilities the cost of sls and how that compares to other rockets is a topic for video all its own but this is a rabbit hole that i'm afraid we will have to go down together because i can't just throw a number out here without justifying it especially when nasa themselves has put estimates out there as low as 876 million dollars per launch so if you take my word at face value and want to avoid this rabbit hole feel free to skip forward to this time mark in the video alright so the price of sls isn't what this video is supposed to be about but it will be important so let's speed run how i arrived at this estimated cost here is the sls rocket from the top we have the interim cryogenic propulsion stage called the icps below that we have the core stage the core stage has four rs-25 engines on the bottom and then there is a five segment srb or solid rocket booster on either side if we can find a cost for each part of the vehicle we will find the total cost of the vehicle so starting with these five segment srbs according to nasa's booster element office the boosters for sls cost 200 million dollars each for the first three launches but it is expected to cost 125 million each beyond that so we're gonna take the low number here and say that the pair of boosters cost 250 million dollars the contract for the production of sls five segment srbs is expected to be released shortly so we'll find out for sure eventually now moving on to the rs 25 engines this one is a lot easier because we have the contract for their production nasa paid aerojet rocketdyne 1.79 billion dollars for 18 rs-25 engines breaking down to 100 million dollars per engine now again there are four of these engines on the sls so that's 400 million dollars each flight next we have the core stage like with the srbs we are still waiting on the details of the production contract to be released what we do know is the core stage is the backbone of the sls vehicle and required by far the most new development of any component it is meant to be and expected to be the most expensive component but right now we only have estimates i got an estimate of between five and eight hundred million dollars per unit from big mike on twitter if you don't follow him you should check him out he's a huge sls fan so i know his estimate isn't being unfair to the vehicle and he is very knowledgeable on the subject matter so let's take a number on the lower end and say the core stage costs 600 million dollars each now the last part of the launch vehicle is the icps we do have a number for this piece nasa paid 645 million dollars to get three of these stages now unlike the rest of the pieces i've covered so far this cost does include the dev cost but i can't find any numbers excluding that and at the end of the day they paid this for three so if we break it down it's 215 million dollars per icps which brings the total marginal cost to 1 billion 465 million dollars which is kind of crazy because the saturn v cost about 1.35 billion dollars to launch in 2021 so it's pretty close but that's just the marginal cost i think it's also important to know what the total launch cost of a vehicle is and that includes the development cost now i know what you're saying you can't just add the dev cost to the sls that's not fair i disagree here what people often don't consider is that all other rockets already have their dev cost built into their prices the launch cost of a new glenn or electron or falcon heavy include the development cost these companies must recoup that investment over the lifetime launches of the rocket so the dev cost is built into the pricing for their launches also just trust me if you're an sls fan you're going to want development costs to be included once we compare these numbers to apollo from 2012 to 2021 the sls has accrued a total of 24.5 billion dollars in development cost this is including the one billion dollars in development the exploration upper stage has received but this is excluding the six billion dollars of ground support development and the four billion dollars spent to develop the five segment srbs for the aries program which are now being used on sls if all the sls dev costs were to stop this year and we amortized that cost over an optimistic 20 lifetime launches enough launches to get us to 2040 this adds up to 1.23 billion dollars per launch adding this to the marginal cost we get a total of 2.7 billion dollars per launch if sls launches less than 20 times which if we're being honest is pretty likely this cost becomes even worse so that's how i get the 1.46 to 2.7 billion dollar launch cost for the sls but let's spend a few moments longer in the rabbit hole to estimate the cost of an artemis launch we would also need to include the payload which is the orion capsule and its european service module thankfully for both of these items we have the production contracts nasa paid lockheed martin 4.6 billion for six orion capsules so they cost 766 million dollars each the european service module is made and paid for by europe but it still costs 200 million dollars to produce now these are the unit costs for both these items adding them to the unit cost of sls launch vehicle gives us the marginal cost of a full artemis launch 2.4 billion dollars the marginal cost of launching a saturn 5 and the apollo command and service module was a little less than 2 billion dollars making apollo cheaper than artemis if you exclude development costs but now just as we did with the sls let's amortize the cost of orion's development over an optimistic 20 launch lifetime the cost from 2006 to 2019 when orion development finished was 21.35 billion dollars which comes to an extra 1.06 billion dollars per launch so orion and the european service module come out to about 1.9 billion dollars per launch now adding the total cost of an sls launch and the total cost of the orion and european service module payload gives us the total cost of launching astronauts on snls and orion for artemis 4.6 billion dollars now an apollo mission if you include the development cost for saturn 5 and apollo command module is 5.43 billion dollars i told you dev cost is important well we finally made it out now that we have the costs for these methods we can finally get to the fun part we're going to compare the three methods for bringing astronauts to the moon to each other and to the way that we did it in the late 1960s to see how sustainable artemis can be for this comparison we'll be looking at the total costs including development since this gives us the full picture and evens out the playing field first let's compare how much each method costs to take one astronaut from earth to the surface of the moon and back starting with apollo for a baseline we can see that the saturn v apollo capsule and lunar module cost 6.9 billion dollars per mission to bring two astronauts down to the surface so that gets us a per astronaut cost of 3.45 billion dollars now the next few options rely on the hls landers these landers are really early in development and the only costs we know are the development costs and a predicted launch cost that i covered in my last video so i'll be adding these and leaving the unit costs of the landers as variables so sls and orion if they use the national team ils lander would cost 5.86 billion dollars plus the ils lander cost each mission if they use dinetics alpaca it would cost 5.62 billion plus some fraction of the cost of alpaca since it's reusable plus the cost of those three refueling tanks for each mission if starship is the lander the cost would be between 5.17 billion and 5.44 billion plus some fraction of the reusable starship lander cost now all three of these landers are capable of taking four astronauts to the surface eventually but they'll start off with just two for the comparison though we're going to break down the cost using four astronauts so that gives the sls and national team a per astronaut cost of greater than 1.47 billion dollars sls in alpaca gets a little more than 1.4 billion and sls starship over 1.36 billion per mission let's see what it would be like if the lunar commercial crew program did the job just so it's known i'm considering the development costs of upgrading crew dragon for lunar missions to cost no more than what nasa paid to completely develop the capsule from the ground up which was 3.1 billion dollars and there's another thing to note here since falcon heavy has a lower cost and higher cadence it would allow for the hls lander and lunar crew dragon development costs to be amortized over a much greater number of launches so falcon heavy lunar dragon and the national team lander would cost 887.5 million dollars plus the cost of the ils lander each mission with the alpaca the mission would cost 825 million dollars plus some fraction of the reusable alpaca lander and the cost of the three refueling tanks if starship is the lander it would cost between 491 and 763 million dollars plus a fraction of the reusable starship that brings the cost per astronaut to over 222 million for national team more than 206.25 million for alpaca and over 191 million on starship and finally we have the last method using the hls starship to ferry crew from low earth orbit to the moon and back this doesn't require rendezvous with any hls lander since it already is an hls lander so the total cost including development is between 367 and 667.5 million dollars making the cost per astronaut somewhere between 92 and 167 million dollars so let's compare the average per astronaut cost of each option we've looked at we have apollo at 3.45 billion sls at more than 1.41 billion falcon heavy at more than 206 million and the falcon 9 and hls starship at 129.5 million so there are some pretty amazing differences here the good news is that the current plan costs less than half of what apollo cost per astronaut but when you put it next to the commercial lunar crew option it is around 7 times as expensive and obviously the falcon 9 to hls starship method is shockingly cheap at less than one tenth the price of the current artemis plan but we can make this comparison a little more detailed so let's take a look at the cost per hour on the surface the longest apollo mission spent 75 hours on the moon compare that to the very first artemis mission which will more than double that at 168 hours and the visits will only get longer from there so let's compare the per hour cost of apollo to our three artemis options performing a three-week long stay the apollo mission cost of 6.9 billion divided by the 75 hours comes to 92 million dollars per hour on the surface the current sls and orion plan would cost about 11.3 million per hour you can see how long mission duration greatly improves cost the commercial lunar crew falcon heavy would run about 1.6 million dollars per hour and the falcon 9 hls method at about a million dollars per hour we're going to take this hourly rate one step further and find out what each mission costs per human hour now what i mean by human hour is this apollo had two humans on the surface for 75 hours so it had 150 human hours a three-week artemis mission would have four humans on the surface for 504 hours giving it a total of 2016 human hours this is a more accurate way to view the missions in terms of productivity because more people means more science the longest apollo mission achieved a cost of 46 million dollars per human hour on the moon a three-week artemis mission sent by sls would cost 2.83 million dollars per human hour the same stay sent by a falcon heavy crew dragon would cost around four hundred eight thousand dollars per hour and finally the same three week stay if sent by a falcon 9 and hls starship would cost about 250 dollars per human hour this is why it's so important to evaluate these options while all options for artemis outclass apollo when you consider development costs and mission effectiveness due to the increased number of astronauts and increased mission duration the falcon heavy lunar crew dragon is seven times as cost effective as sls and the falcon 9 to hls from low earth orbit method is around 10 times more effective let's take a look at the difference this increased effectiveness makes over the course of the artemis program here is the current plan for artemis that we looked at in the beginning of the video the only change i'm making here is that the hls won't be ready by 2024 which nasa has already admitted i'm going to place the first landing at 2026 and to keep it simple this comparison will assume all three methods sls falcon heavy lunar dragon and falcon 9 hls starship would be ready by 2026 but as i've said earlier while this is a feasible timeline for the two concepts it's not necessary if they aren't ready you would just stick with sls until they are so we're going to take the comparison from 2026 out to the year 2040 and here's why it's a nice round date of course but it's also a presidential election year and a year for a nasa decadal survey where they decide what their focus will be for that decade if artemis makes it that far 2040 will be a year it faces the most scrutiny and consideration for continuation or cancellation for the current plan at a cadence of one launch per year sls can take two people to the surface for the first two missions and four people for the remaining 13 missions at a cost of about six billion dollars total per launch that's the 5.7 billion for the total cost of sls orion and the hls including all their development plus a 300 million dollar estimate for the unit cost of the hls lander at 6 billion per launch the 15 missions would have a total cost of 90 billion dollars these missions would bring 56 astronauts to the moon if the average mission stay over the years was three weeks then the total time spent on the moon will have been 315 days meaning humans will have spent 5.75 of the 15 years since the first landing on the moon's surface the total human hours that's the combined time on the surface for each individual astronaut would be 3.45 years moving on to the commercial learner crew program the permission cost would be around 1.1 billion dollars so that's the 800 million for the total cost of the falcon heavy lunar crew dragon and hls including the development costs plus a 300 million dollar estimate for the hls lander unit cost as we did before if we spent the same amount as the current plan 90 billion dollars we could do 81 total launches of the system 81 versus 15. now that only comes out to around five or so launches a year which seems like a perfectly reasonable cadence for a falcon heavy especially if they were able to recover both side boosters 81 launches would bring a total of 320 astronauts to the lunar surface once again assuming that the first two missions only bring two astronauts 320 astronauts that's a hundred more than have ever visited the iss the total time spent on the moon will have been 1701 days or over four and a half years meaning humans would be on the surface for 31 percent of the 15-year program the total human hours on the moon would be equivalent to 18.6 years and finally we have the hls starship taking people to the moon from low earth orbit with the people launching on the falcon 9. taking the highest possible cost estimate we get a per mission cost of 667.5 million dollars this means if we spend the same 90 billion dollars we could do 134 missions with this system this comes to about nine missions per year which falcon 9 is capable of but these are human launches we're talking about still they're only launches to low earth orbit with full first stage recovery spacex is already set to do four of these missions in a 12 month period as we speak with some more boosters and capsules nine flights per year should be possible and it's important to keep in mind that a starliner could perform this mission also so nine crude launches per year between two providers doesn't seem that unreasonable this would bring a total of 536 astronauts to the surface of the moon to put that in perspective the total number of people to ever reach orbit is 565. this would bring the total amount of time on the moon to 2814 days meaning humans would have spent 51 percent of the 15-year program on the moon with this incredible cadence of nine visits per year if visitations could extend to a 40-day length about six weeks then we could achieve constant human presence on the moon now wouldn't that be an achievement so with 536 visitors our total human hours on the surface reaches a remarkable 30.8 years can you even imagine the science that would come of this think of everything we got from apollo which had a total human surface time of 25 days now i want to note here instead of just sending more and more people to the moon you could take a few other routes the cheaper permission cost allows you to spend more money on other parts of the program such as science experiments lunar habitats or vehicles and all sorts of things or you could just pocket that money and keep the program at a modest cost performing the same functions for way less money allowing the program to stay lean and avoid cancellation either way more results for less money gives nasa flexibility to do as they determine well there's really not much left to say when you look at these results side by side sls and orion will certainly be the vehicles that take us back to the moon but that doesn't mean we need to throw all other options away if there are current vehicles that if upgraded could increase the number of astronauts on the moon from 56 to 320 why wouldn't we try it better yet if there's a human landing system contestant being considered right now which could eliminate the need for lunar crew launches entirely and instead allow us to use cheaper currently flying low earth orbit vehicles instead all without requiring the development of any new hardware or programs why wouldn't we pursue it especially when that could take the number of astronauts from 56 to 536 to conclude my thoughts on this comparison the current artemis plan is not awful and it's certainly more sustainable than apollo but in the year 2040 when they gather to review the program and consider its future if they look back and see that they spent 90 billion dollars to send 56 people to the moon a cost of 1.6 billion dollars per person would they call it quits i would certainly hope not but who's to say however if they look back and see that they spent 90 billion to bring 536 people to the moon at a cost of just 168 million per person i believe continuation becomes the obvious path so the meat of this video is now over and i'm just going to go over some of my final personal thoughts but first i want to thank everyone for tuning in and for being so patient while i got this video out it was a lot longer than i expected and i didn't even cover all the possible improvements i thought of so there may be another improving artemis video down the road if you haven't yet please like and subscribe and feel free to share the video to all your fellow space fans it really means a lot let me start by saying i'm i'm really not an sls hater but i'm not ashamed to admit that i'm not the biggest fan of it either one day i'm gonna make a video clarifying all my thoughts on the rocket because it's just too much to get into right now but criticizing sls doesn't automatically make you some musk worshiping fanboy team space can't just become a shield against any and all criticism of certain rockets the one response you always hear when suggesting replacements for sls is the sls is the only rocket capable of bringing us back to the moon my response to that is only if we choose to let it be and i hope this video has shown you why sure if we decide to ignore all other possibilities and not find anything else of course it's going to be the only way now on the opposite side there are people out there who might watch this video and say why are you paying so much attention to crew dragon and falcon heavy and falcon 9 starship is coming online soon so just launch the people on starship it'll be cheaper and it can bring way more people now trust me the moment starship is reliably launching and landing humans you won't find me standing in the way of us using it but here's the thing it's not there yet and we don't know how long it will be before it is even if it's just a few years guess what falcon heavy and crew dragon are flying right now we can't just not use the tools we have at our disposal because there's a shiny new tool further in the pipeline the discussion seems to devolve into a false dichotomy of let's use only what we have today and only in this one particular way or let's not use any tools we have today and wait for this better tool that's coming out soon i think an ideal progression would be to continue with sls and orion select alpaca and starship as the hls landers and starting this year begin the commercial lunar crew program to human rate falcon heavy and develop the lunar crew dragon the first mission or so would fly on sls and orion and the alpaca would be the first lander when the lunar crew dragon is ready it can begin to take over for the sls and the remaining built sls's could still fly because the more people to the moon the better once the hls starship is online flights would transition away from the lunar dragon on falcon heavy and onto the cheaper falcon 9 carrying people to the hls starship in low earth orbit and down the road once starship is a fully matured system we could begin to rely on it and hopefully some similar competitors to bring humans all the way looking at you blue origin so my final thought to leave you with is this more funding is the best thing that can happen for artemis but the second best thing is using the funding more wisely you

Channel: Apogee

Views: 79,849

Keywords: NASA, HLS, Spacex, Elon, Musk, Moon, Artemis, Crew Dragon, Starship

Id: e9ZKo8h5Ddw

Length: 67min 52sec (4072 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 16 2021