May 15, 2019

Orbital Insight Opens Its Satellite Network to the Masses (Source: Bloomberg)
Google’s long-running quest has been “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” This corporate mantra focuses, for the most part, on arranging and analyzing data produced by humans, be it websites, books, calendar appointments, or the location of businesses around a city. But what if instead of gathering the world’s information from the ground up, you could begin organizing all of that data from above by looking down at Planet Earth itself? This has been the mission of Orbital Insight.

Founded in 2013, Orbital pulls in images snapped by satellites and uses them to watch and analyze human activity. It can monitor the number of cars in Walmart parking lots across the U.S. to see how busy the back-to-school shopping season is, the number of new homes going up in Houston, the amount of oil in China’s storage tanks, or the production activity at Tesla’s auto factory. Traditional economic data also measure these types of things, but Orbital says its images are more accurate indicators of what’s happening on Earth. “What we are selling is truths about the world,” says James Crawford, its founder and chief executive officer.

To pull useful information out of thousands upon thousands of images, Orbital built a complex software system infused with artificial intelligence. It’s spent years holding the hands of hedge funds, government agencies, and other customers to teach them how the software works and how to customize analysis, acting almost like a consultant. On May 15 the company released Orbital Go, a product it’s billing as more of a self-service application that lets customers hunt for fresh insights on their own. It’s part of a mission to make the technology widely available to businesses, governments, and other organizations, allowing anyone to interrogate the planet. (5/15)

Air Force Announces Candidate Sites for US Combatant Command for Space (Source: USAF)
The secretary of the Air Force selected six locations as candidate bases to potentially host the headquarters for United States Space Command. This combatant command was approved by the U.S. Congress in 2018 and in December 2018 the President of the United States directed its establishment as the eleventh functional Unified Combatant Command.

The candidate locations are: Buckley Air Force Base, Colorado; Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station, Colorado; Peterson AFB, Colorado; Redstone Arsenal, Alabama; Schriever AFB, Colorado; and Vandenberg AFB, California. The next step will be to complete site surveys and analysis of each candidate location for its ability to meet mission requirements, capacity, environmental impact and cost criteria. The Air Force expects to approve the preferred location during the summer of 2019, which will be followed by an environmental analysis.

Editor's Note: So there is a 'strategic basing process' underway, but only for the already-shortlisted sites. Was the Florida delegation misled or did they misunderstand what the Air Force told them? Someone's mistake got a lot of Florida officials spun-up, with a lot of money spent. (5/14)

Could Trump Really Make It to the Moon in 2024? (Source: The Atlantic)
“Under my administration, we are restoring NASA to greatness,” Trump said in a tweet on Monday night. The tweet, resolute and sprinkled with capital letters, exuded confidence and determination. The administration would like this projected mission to be treated, in advance, as a historic event: The mission has been named Artemis—the sister of Apollo—because, officials say, it will put the first woman on the moon. In Trump’s telling, the moon mission sounds inevitable, and success guaranteed.

They’re not. By space-exploration measures, 2024 is right around the corner. To make that goal, NASA would need to launch astronauts inside a crew capsule (that is still being tested) on a giant rocket (that has never flown before) to a floating station around the moon (that doesn’t yet exist) and drop them to the surface in lunar-specific spacesuits (that don’t exist either). In Greek mythology, Artemis and Apollo are twins, but while the Apollo-era missions were fed with a massive budget, this new Artemis mission is off to a smaller start. (5/14)

Scientists are Grappling With Our Biggest Limitation in Spaceflight: Our Own Bodies (Source: Vox)
The human body has evolved, for hundreds of thousands of years, to thrive on the surface of the Earth. But what happens when you take such an earthbound body and put it in the weightlessness of space? Things get weird. Click here. (5/14)

Florida Tech Elected to Universities Space Research Association (Source: Florida Tech)
Florida Tech was recently elected a member of the Universities Space Research Association (USRA), the 50-year-old nonprofit research corporation that utilizes in-house and university-based expertise to advance space science and technology. The Council of Institutions at USRA, the Columbia, Maryland-based non-profit organization, unanimously elected Florida Tech at USRA’s annual meeting April 23.

“Given our space heritage, STEM focus and ongoing student and faculty success in tackling the most important space and technology challenges before us, we are excited and honored to join an organization that will help us achieve even more, together,” said Florida Tech Senior Vice President for Research Gisele Bennett, Ph.D.

USRA was founded in 1969, driven by the vision of James Webb, the NASA administrator from 1961 to 1968, and Frederick Seitz, the president of the National Academy of Sciences from 1962 to 1969. They recognized that the technical challenges of space exploration would require an ongoing and strong collaboration between NASA and the university research community. (5/14)

This Is Why Mars Is Red And Dead While Earth Is Blue And Alive (Source: Forbes)
What MAVEN saw was that Mars loses, on average, about 100 grams (¼ pound) of atmosphere to space every second. During flaring events, where the solar wind becomes much stronger than normal, that increases to about twenty times the typical value. When the atmosphere was much denser, though, the same level of solar wind would strip it away much more quickly. Timescales of merely ~100 million years would be sufficient to transform a Mars-sized world, without any protection from the solar wind, from having an Earth-like atmosphere to one akin to what we find on present-day Mars.

After perhaps a billion years with liquid water precipitating and flowing freely on the Martian surface, a tiny slice of cosmic history was enough to blow the habitable prospects of Mars completely away.

Both Mars and Earth had early atmospheres that were heavy, massive, and extraordinarily rich in CO2. While Earth's carbon dioxide got absorbed into the oceans and locked up into carbonate rocks, Mars was unable to do the same, as its oceans were too acidified. The presence of sulfur dioxide led to Martian oceans that were rich in sulfuric acid. This led to geology of Mars we've discovered with rovers and landers, and pointed to a different cause — the solar wind — as the culprit in the mystery of the missing Martian atmosphere. (5/14)

NASA, Northrop Grumman Finish Testing Cislunar Habitat Mockup (Source: SpaceFlight Insider)
As Northrop Grumman’s NG-11 Cygnus spacecraft flew high above in low Earth orbit, NASA astronauts at JSC completed evaluation of the company’s full-scale cislunar habitat mockup. It is designed to test the ergonomics, feature layout and functional compatibility with basic “day-in-the-life” astronaut tasks for potential long-term use as a part of the future Lunar Gateway in cislunar space.

The habitat mockup necessarily incorporated all core elements that would eventually be needed by a four-person Orion crew: sleep stations, a galley, crew exercise equipment and of course accommodations for science, a robotics workstations and life support systems. In particular, the modules evaluated included a 14-foot wide habitat, a 10-foot wide habitat and an airlock/tunnel mockup.

Formal testing was performed by future Gateway flight operators and four members of the NASA astronaut corps, two with flight experience from the Shuttle and ISS era, and two astronaut candidates who represented the as-of-yet unflown next generation. Informal feedback and input was also obtained through Northrop Grumman’s network of veteran astronauts and prior program workers. (5/15)

Groups Oppose Trump's Pell Raid for NASA Funding (Source: Express News)
The American Council on Education said the Pell Grant cuts "would hurt students and make college more expensive." ... "We strongly oppose this proposal and urge Congress to instead provide the necessary increase to Pell funding in the House appropriations bill," the council wrote. Laura Seward Forczyk, founder and executive director of Georgia Space Alliance, also opposed the move. "Cutting education now cripples the space workforce later," she said on Twitter. "Is this the future we wish to create?"

Nearly 415,000 students in Texas received Pell Grants in 2017, the most recent year for which data is available from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Statewide, the University of Texas System had the largest number of students attending who had received Pell Grants — nearly 70,000 students. Houston Community College had the largest among individual colleges and public universities, with 17,486. The University of Houston was second among individual four-year universities with 14,742, behind the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley with 15,306.

"More than 40 percent of our students system-wide rely on Pell Grants to make college education more affordable and transform their lives," UH System officials said in a written statement. "As a longtime partner, we recognize the importance of NASA, but encourage Congress and the Administration to examine alternative funding sources for space exploration." (5/14)

It Isn’t Easy Finding Something Smaller Than a Human Hair from 22,000 Miles Away (Source: Harris Corp.)
The space industry is mostly focused on designing, launching and managing unmanned spacecraft – weather, communications, GPS and other satellites. And unless you follow the industry closely, you might not know that it isn’t entirely unusual for these spacecraft to encounter problems. That was the situation our engineers found themselves in last year when the Harris-built main instrument on a newly launched weather satellite wasn’t working as designed. This was the second in a new series of weather satellites that sit 22,300 miles above Earth, called the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-S (GOES-S).

The satellite launched one year after GOES-R, which had already proven itself by delivering on the promise of better and faster data to support improved weather forecasts to save lives and property. NOAA had high expectations for the satellite. But during the checkout phase before it became operational, the team discovered that its main instrument, the Advanced Baseline Imager, wasn’t working as expected. ABI is responsible for the lion’s share of the satellite’s data, so it was a big deal.

Imagine trying to figure out why the high-definition television in your living room is only showing black and white images. Now imagine trying to figure that out from your backyard. Our engineers and others from NASA and NOAA were trying to diagnose what was preventing 13 of ABI’s 16 spectral channels from working – from 22,300 miles below the orbiting satellite. When there’s no human to talk with, engineers systematically run through tasks to troubleshoot issues and can sometimes resolve them by sending software updates. But mechanical issues are a different story. Click here. (5/15)

SpaceX's Starlink Could Cause Cascades of Space Junk (Source: Scientific American)
Nine companies total—including SpaceX, Amazon, Telesat and LeoSat—have been licensed by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to launch such constellations. SpaceX alone plans to launch nearly 12,000 satellites by the mid-2020s, which will operate either at an altitude about 500 kilometers in low-Earth orbit (LEO) or a higher altitude of roughly 1,200 kilometers in nongeostationary orbit (NGSO). It is the first company of the nine to launch any fully functional satellites of its constellation.

OneWeb, the next front-runner, has plans for a 650-strong constellation in NGSO. Six of its test satellites were launched this past February, and its first proper launch of three dozen or so satellites are planned for later this year. Monthly launches of 30 to 36 satellites will follow, with the service coming online in 2021. Every other company has similar plans for incrementally launching hundreds to thousands of satellites of its own.

Whenever debris or a defunct spacecraft gets too close for comfort to an active satellite—typically when a collision risk rises to one part in several thousand—the satellite’s operator must perform a collision-avoidance maneuver. The International Space Station, for example, is moved when the chance of a collision is greater than one in 10,000. Click here. (5/15)

PTScientists and ArianeGroup Agree on Far-Reaching Cooperation for Lunar Missions (Source: PTScientists)
PTScientists and ArianeGroup have today agreed in Berlin on a far-reaching cooperation. The contract governs the cooperation between the two companies for future Moon missions such as the planned ISRU mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and beyond.  Against the background of intensifying international competition in the field of lunar missions, the agreement underlines the will and ambition of PTScientists to position itself as a globally leading European provider of lunar surface transport services for private and institutional customers, with the support of ArianeGroup as the European space transport provider towards the lunar orbit. (5/9)

Women in Kyrgyzstan are Fighting Sexism by Joining the Space Race (Source: WIRED)
In a small back office in a quiet suburb in Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek, a group of girls and young women nicknamed The Satellite Girls gather after school or work to huddle around computers to learn how to build the country’s first spacecraft. The Kyrgyz Space Program was started in March 2018 and has around ten full-time members who meet several times a week to study programming and physics, contact space experts and launch providers and practice soldering. Their aim is to construct and launch a small CubeSat satellite into space by 2021.

The Kyrgyz Space Program’s members are aged between 17 to 25 and training is led by 19-year-old Alina Anisimova, who started teaching herself engineering skills by dismantling computers at the age of six and following online tutorials. “You can teach yourself anything you want, and you can be whoever you want,” says Anisimova, who started teaching herself English online three months ago.

Camille Wardrop Alleyne, who works for Nasa's lunar payloads team, is one of several mentors helping the Kyrgyz group with their project through her charity The Brightest Stars. It aims to encourage more girls to work in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mechanics (STEM), especially those from less privileged backgrounds, and runs a Girls and CubeSats program. (5/13)

NASA Awards $106 Million to US Small Businesses for Technology Development (Source: NASA)
Managing pilotless aircraft and solar panels that could help humans live on the Moon and Mars are among the technologies NASA is looking to develop with small business awards totaling $106 million. In all, NASA has selected 142 proposals from 129 U.S. small businesses from 28 states and the District of Columbia to receive Phase II contracts as part the agency's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.

Eight Florida projects are among those selected, including: Orlando's BEAM for Broadband Vector Vortices for High Contrast Coronagraphy; Miami's City Labs for 5 Watt per Kilogram Tritium Betavoltaic; Gainesville's Interdisciplinary Consulting for Capacitive Vector Skin Friction Measurement Systems for Complex Flow Fields; Jacksonville's Made in Space for Precision In-Space Manufacturing for Structurally Connected Space Interferometry, and Glass Alloy in Microgravity; Winter Springs' Pegasense for 4.3 GHz Passive Wireless Sensor System; Palmetto's R Cubed Engineering for Independent Authentication of ADS-B And Transponder Equipped Aircraft Location; and Gainesville's Streamline Numerics for High Performance Solver for Coupled Cavitation and Fluid-Structure Interaction in Cryogenic Environments. (5/15)

A Second SpaceX Starship Prototype is Being Developed in Florida (Sources: Teslarati, Ars Technica, Brownsville Herald)
SpaceX is building a second Starship prototype, this one in Florida. Recent images showed that second prototype of the company's next-generation launch vehicle under construction on Florida's Space Coast. Elon Musk confirmed on Twitter that the company is doing "simultaneous competing builds" of Starship prototypes in Florida and Texas. At the Texas site, SpaceX is preparing for another round of testing.

"Both sites will make many Starships," Musk shared on Twitter. "This is a competition to see which location is most effective. Answer might be both." This will not be a strict A/B test, a randomized experiment. Rather, Musk added, any insights gained by one team must be shared with the other, but the other team is not required to use them." (5/15)

Small Launchers Getting Bigger (Source: Space News)
Small launch vehicles are getting bigger. Small satellites, launch providers say, are growing larger as satellite operators add more capable cameras, sensors and other payloads to new missions, leading startups to revise their vehicle designs to accommodate heavier payloads. Some launch vehicle developers also said that feedback from potential national security customers led them to increase their payload capacity. (5/14)

House Appropriators Withhold SDA Funding (Source: Space News)
House appropriators would block funding for the Pentagon's Space Development Agency (SDA) in their draft of a 2020 spending bill. The bill, to be marked up in a closed session today, would withhold funding for the agency until 90 days after the Defense Department submits a detailed plan for the new agency. The language reflects concerns voiced by lawmakers in recent hearings about the lack of specifics about the SDA's role and responsibilities, including how the SDA fits into the larger landscape of military organizations that develop space technologies. The bill also includes $15 million to continue studies of a Space Force, rather than the $72 million requested by the Pentagon to begin establishing the service. (5/15)

Regulatory Challenges for Eutelsat's Africa Service (Source: Space News)
Eutelsat's efforts to develop a satellite broadband business in Africa are off to a slow start. The company's Konnect Africa started service in late 2018 using leased capacity on Emirati operator Yahsat's Al Yah 3 satellite, and was live in 19 countries as of February. The company, though, has run into a number of regulatory and logistical issues, including the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo shutting off internet access during elections in December. The company expects "no material revenues" from Konnect Africa this year as a consequence of those challenges, but remains optimistic about future demand for the service. (5/15)

Israel's SpaceIL Secures $1 Million for Second Moonshot (Source: Jerusalem Post)
SpaceIL has secured a $1 million prize to support work on a second lunar lander. The Genesis Prize Foundation provided the funds to support initial work on Beresheet 2, a follow-up of the Beresheet lander that crashed while attempting to land on the moon last month. Backers of the project announced shortly after the failed landing they would try again, although they have not disclosed details on the mission or its projected cost. (5./15)

Oreo to Commemorate Apollo with Cookie (Source: CollectSPACE)
Oreo will commemorate the Apollo 11 50th anniversary with a commemorative cookie. The "Marshmallow Moon" version of the famous cookie will feature designs of astronauts, rockets and the moon on the cookie, with a "purple marshmallow creme" inside. Oreo joins brands ranging from Budweiser to Zippo that plan to release versions of their products tied to the moon landing anniversary. (5/15)

Florida Officials Feel Misled by DoD About Opportunity to Host US Space Command Headquarters (Source: Stars & Stripes)
In a meeting room at Orlando International Airport just last week, dozens of state leaders spoke with certainty of Florida's chances to host the newly formed U.S. Space Command, the nation's 11th combatant command which would coordinate space-related activities across the military services. "Where else would you put a headquarters than the place that lives space?," proclaimed Chip Diehl, a member of the Florida Defense Support Task Force. The Air Force's response came Tuesday: Not in Florida.

At the Orlando summit, Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez said "The game is wide open, and Florida is absolutely in it." But the Air Force has since confirmed it was sticking to a previously released shortlist of six bases, four in Colorado, one in Alabama and one in California. Florida thought otherwise because U.S. Rep. Michael Waltz, R-St. Augustine, was told the Air Force would follow a "strategic basing process," meaning it would determine what criteria it was looking for in a base, make that information public and then decide on a shortlist. Waltz sits on the House Armed Services Committee and the Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

But Dale Ketcham, vice president of government and external relations at Space Florida, said it appears that information was incorrect. "As I understand it right now, the Air Force Legislative Liaison office has misled a number of members of our delegation as to what the process was, and that's not a good thing," Ketcham said on Tuesday. "This is the worst-case scenario because now Florida is not just disappointed _ it's pissed off." Florida began mounting an aggressive campaign earlier this year to clinch the new Space Command headquarters. The Pentagon has estimated it would cost about $84 million to set up the unit, which would be comprised of about 1,200 personnel. (5/14)

SpaceX Static Fires Falcon 9 with Satellites On Board for the First Time in Years (Source: Teslarati)
SpaceX completed a Falcon 9 static fire ahead of Starlink’s first dedicated launch, breaking a practice that dates back to Falcon 9’s catastrophic failure in September 2016. Around nine minutes before a planned static fire test, an explosion completely destroyed the rocket and the Amos-6 communications satellite payload, severely damaging Launch Complex 40 too. Since that fateful failure, all 42 subsequent Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy satellite launches have been preceded by static fire tests without a payload fairing attached.

This process typically adds 24-48 hours of work to launch operations, an admittedly tiny price to pay to reduce the chances of a rocket failure completely destroying valuable payloads. With Starlink v0.9, SpaceX is making different choices. The only exceptions since Amos-6 are the launch debuts of Falcon Heavy – with a payload that was effectively disposable and SpaceX-built – and Crew Dragon DM-1, in which Falcon 9’s integration with Dragon’s launch abort system had to be tested as part of the static fire. Every other SpaceX rocket launch since September 2016 has excluded payloads during each routine pre-flight static fire.

In 2016, supercooled liquid oxygen ruptured a composite overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV) in Falcon 9’s upper stage. The resultant explosion posed a serious threat to the livelihood of the payload's owner, Spacecom. Posed with a question of whether saving a day or two of schedule was worth the potential destruction of customer payloads, both customers, SpaceX, and their insurers obviously concluded that static fires should be done without payloads aboard the rocket. With Starlink, SpaceX is both the sole payload/satellite stakeholder and launch provider, meaning that nearly all of the mission’s risk rest solely on SpaceX’s shoulders. (5/14)

The Changing Assumptions of the Small Launch Market (Source: Space News)
Small satellites, launch providers say, are growing larger as satellite operators add more capable cameras, sensors and other payloads to new missions. It’s no surprise, then, to see so many new launch companies modifying their designs to accommodate larger missions. Two launch startups changed their designs in the past six months alone — PLD Space in Spain chose to double the lift capacity of its future Miura 5 rocket to 300 kilograms, and ABL Space Systems of El Segundo, California, increased the lift capacity of its planned RS1 rocket by a third to 1,200 kilograms.

According to Alexandre Vallet, chief of the International Telecommunication Union’s Space Services Department, more than 1,100 non-geosynchronous satellite systems have been proposed since 2013. Of that total, around 200 are telecommunications systems — the type of satellite intended to comprise most publicly known megaconstellations. Predicting which constellations will come to fruition may be just as unpredictable as figuring out which of the 120-plus documented small launcher efforts will actually lift off. But successful constellations are certain to influence the launch segment.

Do small launcher companies need megaconstellation business to survive? How should they approach a market that sometimes feels like its changing faster than the rockets themselves? Five launch companies discussed these topics March 13 at a Washington Space Business Roundtable discussion moderated by SpaceNews. Click here. (5/14)

OneWeb Gears Up To Produce Two Satellites Per Day (Source: Aviation Week)
As OneWeb’s first six satellites reach their operational orbits, a factory in Florida is stockpiling flight hardware and fine-turning software, robotics and equipment to prepare for the start of spacecraft production on June 3. The factory, a partnership of OneWeb and Airbus, draws heavily on experience gleaned from manufacturing the first 10 satellites at Airbus’ Toulouse facility. (5/13)

SpaceX’s Starship Could Launch Secret Turkish Satellite (Source: Teslarati)
According to SpaceX COO/President Gwynne Shotwell and a Turkish satellite industry official, Starship and Super Heavy may have a role to play in the launch of Turksat’s first domestically-procured communications satellite. Per Shotwell’s specific phrasing, this comes as a bit of a surprise. Built by Airbus Defense and Space, SpaceX is already on contract to launch Turksat’s 5A and 5B communications satellites as early as Q2 2020 and Q1 2021, respectively.

The spacecraft referred to in the context of Starship is the generation meant to follow 5A/5B: Turksat 6A and any follow-on variants. Turksat’s 6-series satellites will be designed and manufactured domestically rather than procured from non-Turkish heavyweights like Airbus or SSL. However, the Turksat 6A satellite’s current baseline specifications would make it an extremely odd fit for a launch vehicle as large as Starship/Super Heavy. (5/14)

Single Mom Scores NASA Internship; Strangers Raise $8K to Help Her Go (Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
India Jackson was thrilled when she was accepted to a prestigious summer internship at NASA’s field center in Houston. But there was one big problem: the single mother and Georgia State University student had to pay for her own travel, housing and other living expenses. Jackson, studying for a doctorate in physics, said she wasn’t sure how she could afford the internship.

“I have to pay for rent in two places now, I have to rent a car, I have food, I have my child. What am I going to do?” she recalled thinking. Her cousin Dasha Fuller came up with the idea to try raising money for her on a GoFundMe page last week, with a goal of about $8,000. Within one day, strangers crowdfunded $8,510 for Jackson’s internship. (5/14)

NASA To Put Woman On Moon By 2024; Commercial Space Will Play Major Role (Source: Forbes)
At the end of Ron Howard’s film “Apollo 13,” Tom Hanks intones with a final, rueful quiver, “I look up at the Moon and wonder, when will we be going back? And who will that be?” Let’s hope that will be in five short years. As for who? NASA astronauts, at least one man and one woman, exploring our Moon’s South Pole.

Today, NASA made that goal a bit more tangible by announcing a $1.6 billion lunar amendment to President Trump’s 2020 budget. Of course, Congress has to sign on to this; and, as yet, there are no official estimates for total costs for this proposed 2024 surface mission. But with last week’s unveiling of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander in Washington, D.C., Amazon founder Jeff Bezos provided a shot of new hope that NASA would soon use his new lunar craft for real.

Even so, the key to all of this is making human-rated spaceflight sustainable both technologically and economically. Although the Soviet Union’s early successes in space certainly caught the world by surprise, as historian Douglas Brinkley points out in his new book, “American Moonshot,” the Soviet culture of secrecy may have ultimately worked against them. As Brinkley argues, it may have been NASA’s ability to put it all on the line in an open and honest way that enabled the Americans to outpace their Soviet counterparts in the race to the lunar surface. (5/14)

Is $1.6 Enough for Artemis? Can NASA Change (Source: Ars Technica)
NASA was asked how much funding it needed to accomplish a crewed landing on the Moon, and the answer was a lot ($6b-$8b a year, per sources). What was the White House response to this? Naturally, they said that is way too much, and Congress will never support it. This was the point at which Pence's intervention was needed. He said NASA would reach the Moon "by any means necessary." This would include either a) a lot more funding or b) a new direction using cheaper rockets and more low-Earth orbit assembly.

But Pence has been MIA, at least publicly. The $1.6 billion figure NASA cited Monday is a pittance if you're going to do this mission with SLS, Gateway, Orion, and a three-stage lunar lander. It's not even a down payment. It's kicking the can down the road. The affordable doable option is B - FH/Orion and Blue Moon. For that the SLS and probably the gateway need to die. Slow Soviet-esque bureaucratic turf wars are preventing the logical from being done.

From a NASA employee Q&A: "Funding aside, December 31st, 2024 is ~5.7 years away. Gateway and Human Lunar Landers aren't likely to have their Systems Definition Reviews until 2020, and Preliminary Design Reviews until 2021. Assuming PDRs on Jan 1st, 2021, that leaves only 4 years to deadline. Can you point to any reassuring historical analogs that match our current timeline?" (5/14)