NASA’s $100 Billion Moon Mission Is Going Nowhere

There are government boondoggles, and then there’s NASA’s Artemis program.

More than a half century after Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind, Artemis was intended to land astronauts back on the moon.

It has so far spent nearly $100 billion without anyone getting off the ground, yet its complexity and outrageous waste are still spiraling upward. T

he next US president should rethink the program in its entirety.As someone who greatly respects science and strongly supports space exploration, the more I have learned about Artemis, the more it has become apparent that it is a colossal waste of taxpayer money.

The problems start with the mission, which is more political than scientific. There is little humans can do on the moon that robots cannot. Technology has come a long way since 1969, to put it mildly. We do not need another person on the moon to collect rocks or take scientific measurements.

And the costs of putting people on the moon — and of planning for their potential rescue, should complications arise — are truly astronomical.

To understand the level of wasteful spending, forget the $1 billion in spacesuits that have yet to be delivered. That’s pocket change compared to the rocket, called the Space Launch System.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s inspector general estimates the program has so far burned through $23.8 billion.

Each launch will likely cost at least $4 billion, quadruple initial estimates.

This exceeds private-sector costs many times ove…  r, yet it can launch only about once every two years and — unlike SpaceX’s rockets — can’t be reused.Even if the Space Launch System is completed, there’s a hitch: It isn’t even powerful enough to actually get anyone to the moon, at least not in its current configuration.

It will instead deposit its capsule, called Orion, into what’s called near-rectilinear halo orbit. Here, the capsule — which, despite $20 billion being poured into it, currently has a faulty heat shield — must rendezvous with a landing spacecraft, which will then take the astronauts to the lunar surface.

And getting the landing spacecraft into orbit, before it can be propelled toward the moon to meet Orion, is itself a complex process.