Eleven years in the making, the most powerful NASA-built rocket
since the Apollo program at last stands upright. Framed by the industrial test
platform to which it is mounted, the Space Launch System’s core section is a
gleaming, apricot-colored column cast into relief by twisting pipes and steel
latticework. The rocket is taller than the Statue of Liberty, pedestal and all,
and is the cornerstone of NASA’s astronaut ambitions. The launch vehicle is
central to the agency’s Artemis program to return humans to the lunar surface,
and later, land them on Mars.
اضافة اعلان
NASA set out for a second time to prove that the Space Launch
System is ready to take flight, conducting a continuous “hot fire” of its
engines for more than eight minutes. The test appears to have gone well,
following an earlier test in January that cut off after about 67 seconds
because of errors and equipment problems.
The rocket’s next stop will be Kennedy Space Center in Florida,
and as early as November, the launchpad. It is expected to lift a capsule
called Orion on a path around the moon and back. Its first crewed mission is
planned for 2023. That flight will be the first to lift astronauts beyond
low-Earth orbit since 1972. Indeed, it will send astronauts farther into space
than any human has gone before.
And yet far from being a bold statement about the future of
human spaceflight, the Space Launch System rocket represents something else:
the past, and the end. This is the last class of rocket that NASA is ever
likely to build.
Seeing it launch, though, will actually mean something. While
NASA has long desired to return astronauts to deep space, it could not. The
agency lacked a vehicle designed, tested and validated as safe to lift humans
more than a couple of hundred miles from the ground.
But the course has not run smooth. The Space Launch System was born
not on the drafting tables of engineers, but on the desks of senators. In 2010,
Congress legislated into existence a launch vehicle for firing heavy things to
deep space. What things? TBD. And where, exactly? No one could say for sure.
Members of Congress had no particular design in mind, but they
demanded that NASA rummage through crates of old space shuttle parts whenever
possible to build this thing, and required that it launch by 2016.
Mandated to build the big rocket, NASA cobbled together exploration
programs that would use it. First, it was an asteroid rocket. Then a Mars
rocket. Now, it is an Artemis moon rocket. In any event, the Space Launch
System is billions of dollars over budget and five years beyond its compulsory
launch date.
The setbacks and slow pace that have plagued the Space Launch
System stand in stark contrast to what else has happened in rocketry in the
past decade.
If you’ve logged on to the internet in the past five years, you’ve
probably seen the spectacular launches of rockets built by SpaceX. Elon Musk’s
private aerospace outfit has fired hundreds of satellites into space, and even
a Tesla sports car. Its rocket boosters then return to Earth and land elegantly
upright for reuse. On Sunday, one made the round trip for the ninth time.
This private space program was nurtured by NASA and accelerated
after the space shuttles stopped flying in 2011. Last year, SpaceX began
carrying the agency’s astronauts to the International Space Station. Now the
company has set its sights on landing people on the moon and Mars. But SpaceX’s
rockets aren’t ready to carry astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit, and few other
companies have expressed interest in this truly long-distance travel market.
The ability to reach the moon is not as simple as going a little
farther. The space station operates about 402km above Earth’s surface.
The moon is about 402336km away. Accordingly, after 32 years of false
starts and failed programs, a successful launch of the Space Launch System will
at last reopen old frontiers of human spaceflight. NASA will again have the
hardware to transport humankind to other worlds.
No other American rocket can send astronauts to the moon in a
single launch. The Falcon Heavy, a large rocket built by SpaceX that has flown
three times, is not certified to launch humans. SpaceX has instead focused its
crewed deep space ambitions on Starship, a sleek, ambitious spacecraft that is
under development and possibly years away from flying humans. Right now, if
NASA wants to return astronauts to the moon, the Space Launch System is the
only game in town, even if it costs $2 billion per launch and cannot be reused.
SpaceX and Blue Origin, another private rocket company founded
by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, are solving very difficult problems: how to build
versatile rockets and crew vehicles that land so gently that they are reusable
even with astronauts aboard.
By contrast, the NASA rocket does not look like anyone’s vision
of the future. That is part of what makes the Space Launch System a useful
transitional product. It has no unusual engineering hurdles to leap. There is
every reason to believe that once these rockets demonstrate their flight
worthiness, they will work well and reliably. Until Starship or some other
rocket is flying safely and regularly, NASA can continue its interplanetary
endeavors knowing that in the interim, it has a working giant rocket.
There is great value in that. The big rocket won’t be needed
forever. It might be needed only long enough to get the first woman on the
lunar surface. The commercial launch sector may be ready to take it from there.
It is highly unlikely that NASA will ever again rely on rockets
it has built on its own. The Space Launch System is the end of the line. If the
only purpose it serves is giving the nation the time and confidence to get a
private, reusable vessel spaceborne, it will have been a success.
Whether the Space Launch System program ends next year or next
decade, unlike the end of the space shuttle or Saturn 5, it will not be the end
of a chapter, but the end of a book. NASA will be out of the rocket business.
When the next generation goes to Kennedy Space Center and sees a giant old
Space Launch System booster on display, the tour guide will say, “They don’t
make ‘em like that anymore,” and that will be true — literally.
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