Geostrategy-Direct
By Richard Fisher
In order to meet the National Air Space Administration’s (NASA) new goal of putting Americans back on the Moon in September 2026 for the Artemis III mission, does the United States need new but simpler space architecture, or should it seek to rationalize elements of the existing architecture?
No doubt, the race is on: China could begin flight testing in 2027 its new China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) Long March-10 space launch vehicle (SLV) for Moon missions, with the ambition of putting the first Chinese astronauts on the Moon by 2029 or 2030.
The current U.S. Moon architecture includes the NASA (U.S. government)-origin single-use Space Launch System (SLS) managed by Boeing, using engines from the old U.S. Space Shuttle to transport people to lunar orbit, and then use two potentially reusable Human Landing Systems (HLS) from private U.S. companies SpaceX and Blue Origin, to take U.S. astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon.
But disquiet with this architecture was signaled in an Aug. 16 op-ed in the prominent U.S. space issue publication Space News, by ten-term former Congressman Robert L. Walker (R-PA) and Dr. Greg Autry, an Associate Provost in Space Commercialization and Strategy at the University of Central Florida who in 2017 served as a Trump Administration White House liaison to NASA.
In Congress, Walker, and then Autry as an author and expert, have lengthy records for sounding the alarm regarding the challenges from China.
In their op-ed titled, “Make space great again,” Congressman Walker and Dr. Autry assert:
“The top space priority for a Trump 47 White House must be putting Artemis back on track. Every major component of this program is facing significant challenges. These are excellent systems that will eventually provide America with unrivaled capabilities for a long-term stay at the moon and take us to Mars. However, the current architecture is complex, requiring dozens of launches, multiple vehicles. It has too many dependencies and has been plagued by delays and supply chain issues.”They then conclude, “Artemis III, originally planned for 2024, is now nominally scheduled to land on the moon in September of 2026, but nobody seriously believes that is possible.”
Losing this new space race with China would be “equivalent to the Soviet’s decisive failure in the first Space Race,” so they propose that if elected, a future Trump Administration should, “appoint a NASA Administrator with the sense of urgency required to ensure American boots on the moon during his second term while continuing to expedite the development of revolutionary systems like the SpaceX Starship.”
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