Meanwhile, NASA's Space Launch System rocket, the Orion deep space crew capsule and ground support system upgrades cost nearly $50 billion over roughly the same period before the unmanned Artemis I mission in 2022, according to an analysis by the Planetary Society. That amount has now risen to just under $60 billion.
The core stage for NASA's second Space Launch System rocket, which will fly on the Artemis II mission, was lifted vertically this week and placed on a support fixture in the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
Credit: NASA
Artemis II, the next flight in NASA's Artemis program, will launch in 2026 on an SLS rocket and an Orion spacecraft to carry a crew of four astronauts around the far side of the moon and back to Earth transport. Artemis III will, as NASA currently envisions it, launch no earlier than mid-2027 on another SLS and Orion, which will dock with SpaceX's Starship lander near the moon for the final descent to the moon's south pole.
No part of the SLS rocket is reusable, and last year NASA's inspector general estimated that the next three Artemis crew launches will cost $4.2 billion each.– more than the agency's total expenditures to help SpaceX finance the development of the Crew Dragon spacecraft.
“We are about to enter an era of great experimentation,” Isaacman said Wednesday.
Listening to the broader context of Isaacman's comments Wednesday, he may have meant this not just in a technical sense, but also in the way NASA does business. The new Trump administration will certainly adhere to NASA's goal of landing humans on the moon, but it is widely expected that the agency's new leaders will assess how to achieve this goal without the budgetary burden of the SLS -rocket. One solution could be to merge elements from several rocket companies, such as SpaceX, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance, to replicate the capabilities of the Space Launch System.
“We have the best spaceship in the world right now in Dragon,” Isaacman said. “This is how American astronauts routinely get to the space station, about every six months. But we're about to have a light switch-like moment when Starship comes online.”
SpaceX has launched six full test flights of the Starship rocket, with the next scheduled for January. SpaceX demonstrated the first catch of the rocket's massive Super Heavy booster after an October launch. Next year, SpaceX plans to catch up with the Starship upper stage after it returns from low Earth orbit, and begin in-space refueling tests with two ships linked together.
NASA will give Starship a human rating for landings on the moon, and SpaceX eventually plans to launch and land humans on Earth using Starship. Once operational, Starship will be able to deliver payloads between 100 and 150 tons into low Earth orbit, and with the advent of orbital refueling, it will carry the same payload mass to the moon, Mars or other destinations.
“What happens when the industry starts launching spaceships from multiple factories? SpaceX has a great vision for this, but so does Blue Origin. You've got Rocket Lab building a brand new giant rocket,” Isaacman said. “You're going to have a lot of people in the room at the same time, and that's why I call it a light switch-like moment, where a lot of things are going to change.”
NASA's spending levels peaked relative to the entire federal budget in 1966, when space program funding accounted for 4.4 percent of all government spending. In recent years this has fallen to approximately 0.5 percent.
“We can do some pretty amazing things when you can write a big check like that,” Isaacman said. “We can go to the moon. We can bring people back safely. That's pretty great, but we're now entering a new era where some of this funding can come privately, through commercial efforts, but still for the benefit of everyone. “
