The Moon Landing Fiasco

{Fiasco: A complete, often ridiculous, embarrassing failure or disaster. It typically refers to an event or ambitious project that goes horribly wrong and completely fails to meet expectations.}

Yes, I said fiasco, because that is what this is. Look, I’ve been reading science fiction almost my entire life. I actually pretended to be sick so I could skip school to watch the original moon landings. I would dearly love to see people back on the moon. But even considering all of that I am also a realist and this whole moon landing scam that NASA is pushing is… Well let’s take a look at it in detail, shall we?

There’s been a lot of hype and, frankly, a lot of 100% pure bullshit being spouted by NASA’s proposed landing of human beings on the moon again. NASA is now claiming that the much delayed moon landing is going to take place in early 2028.

Yeah. Sure it is. The chances of that happening are about the same as me winning one of those billion dollar lotteries which I would never buy a ticket for in the first place.

This whole moon landing fiasco is now years past it’s original launch date and of billions of dollars over budget and while the SLS and Orion ship have flown, we’re probably at least 5 years away from NASA actually being able to pull off a moon landing. They sure as hell aren’t going to be able to do it in something like 18 months. Especially after Blue Origin’s “New Glenn” rocket lit up the whole space coast in Florida with one of the most spectacular explosions seen in decades, taking out not only the rocket itself but its transporter and most of the launch facility. And the New Glenn rocket is (or was) an essential part of this plan to put people back on the moon.

And as for plan itself, it is so bizarrely, hilariously complicated it would have made Rube Goldberg proud. A plan that’s so ridiculously nonsensical that one might even claim, with some justification, that it was more about finding a way to flood private companies with taxpayer money than it ever was about actually landing on the moon.

This plan depends on SpaceX to get specially designed variants of its Starship developed, including a human rated lander. Maybe. It depends on Blue Origin (and SpaceX too, maybe?) to develop landing craft. Maybe. It depends on in orbit refueling of ships. Maybe. It depends on dozens of other private vendors being able to deliver promised equipment, almost none of which is actually in existence except as computer models.

Did you see all of those “maybes” up there? That’s part of the problem. Nobody seems to know for sure who is going to do what or how or why. Both Blue Origin and SpaceX are supposed to be developing some kind of lander either to carry humans down to the surface or at least cargo. Maybe. SpaceX is maybe going to be using Starship to deliver cargo to the lunar surface. Maybe. SpaceX is maybe going to be using another variant of Starship as a tanker to do in-flight refueling of other space vehicles. Maybe.

SpaceX? It hasn’t even managed to pull off a completely successful test of it’s basic Starship. It doesn’t even have one that’s done a full orbit, for heaven’s sake. The last launch looked promising with the new Type 3 ship and booster, but that had issues so serious that the FAA has put a hold on any new launches. And even if that particular ship is successful, it’s not the one that would be used for the lunar program. That would require an entirely different variant of the starship. The variant of Starship that is currently being built and is in testing has nothing to do with the lunar mission. It is one that has a single, specific purpose, to deliver huge numbers of Starlink satellites into orbit.

But at least we know that SpaceX can move fast. And once it’s new Gigabay production facility is up and running in Texas it can crank out its heavy lift booster and Starships in a fraction of the time it can now. But even so, to come up with an entirely new variant of the Starship, put it through testing and several launches to make sure it actually works? Build one rated to carry human beings? In less than 18 months? Sorry. No. Isn’t going to happen.

Then there’s Blue Origin. SpaceX has the infrastructure to crank out boosters and starships in an astonishingly short period of time at least. Blue Origin doesn’t.

It’s New Glenn rocket was supposed to be the launch platform for the Blue Moon Mark I and Mark II landers which were supposed to deliver cargo and eventually also land humans on the moon. (Maybe) And while the New Glenn launch platform has worked, you have ot remember that one out of the three previous flights failed to deliver its payload to orbit and now this one blew up on the pad taking most of the launch site with it.

Then there’s NASA’s SLS, made out of cobbled together parts left over from the shuttle program, including 40 year old space shuttle engines they found in a warehouse somewhere, and that has been plagued with hydrogen leaks, and a Orion space craft which has a highly questionable and potentially dangerous heat shield, thruster problems and non-working interior plumbing.

And then there’s the cost. I don’t really know what the dollar amounts are going to be to cover the costs of SpaceX and Blue Origin for their part in all of this but you can be damn sure it isn’t going to be cheap. But I do know what the SLS is going to cost and it is going to be mind bogglingly expensive. You ready for this? Hold onto your shorts.

NASA’s own inspector general is stating that the first four Artemis missions are going to cost $4.1 billion per launch.

That is not a typo. Four point one billion dollars per launch.

And as I said that number doesn’t include the costs from the required equipment and launches from SpaceX and/or Blue Origin according to the information I have.

Then there is the one question that no one seems to be asking for some reason.

Why?

Seriously. Why? Why do we want to put people on the moon again? Ignore all of that bullshit about somehow mining ice to create rocket fuel to launch Mars missions and all of that guff because it is exactly what I said it was, bullshit. It is not going to happen. Period.

Ignore the bullshit about mining the moon for exotic minerals or other nonsense like that. That is also exactly what I called it. Bullshit. There are no exceedingly rare, exotic minerals on the moon to be mined in the first place. None. Zilch. Zero. If you believe there are, please tell me what rare minerals are worth about $20,000,000 per pound? Because that’s about how much it would cost to retrieve material from the moon, about twenty million dollars per pound.

NASA is planning on an eventual 25 missions to the moon. At current prices, that would work out to about $100 billion.

Let’s look at this a bit differently, shall we? $100 billion would be enough money to build a basic house for every single homeless person in the entire country. Seriously. Run the numbers yourself if you don’t believe me.

There are about 770,000 homeless persons in the US according to the most reliable numbers I can find. A basic, small, 1 bedroom house can be built for about $100,000. We could literally build a basic 1 bedroom home for every single homeless person in the country for less than the total cost of NASA’s moon landing program.

So someone please explain this to me?