NASA’s approach to returning to the moon: Better safe than sorry

Recently, NASA announced what many people dreaded but also expected. 

Artemis II, the crewed mission to circumnavigate the moon, will be delayed from the end of 2024 to September 2025. Artemis III, the first crewed moon landing in over 50 years, will be delayed from the end of 2025 to September 2026. Artemis IV, which will use an upgraded version of the Space Launch System, is scheduled to fly in September 2028.

Several issues have bumped back the Artemis II flight by a little under a year. The most concerning problem involved the damage sustained by the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield during the test flight of Artemis I. Problems have also arisen concerning the abort system as well as a design flaw for certain valves in the Orion. The latter problem is said to be the main cause of moving the Artemis II mission to September 2025.

Artemis III is being pushed back because of delays in developing the space suits the astronauts will need to walk on the moon and, especially, the Starship Human Landing System. The Starship will have to accomplish a challenging number of things, including in-orbit refueling and successfully landing on the moon and lifting off again before NASA puts people on it.

SpaceX is at the beginning rather than the end of its Starship test campaign. The company anticipates being able to undertake the third launch of the immense rocket in February. The need for time-consuming Federal Aviation Administration investigations between each flight is lengthening the time Elon Musk’s company needs to develop a fully functioning, reliable rocket. SpaceX is facing both technical challenges and government red tape headaches in its quest to build the mightiest rocket ever conceived.

The core reason why it is taking so long to go back to the moon stems from NASA’s almost fanatical focus on “crew safety.” The space agency does not want to lose humans on a space mission. It has done so three times before, during the Apollo fire, the Challenger explosion and the Columbia disaster. Subsequent investigations determined that each of these disasters was avoidable. The Apollo 13 mission almost ended with the loss of the crew but was salvaged thanks to NASA’s heroic efforts.

Every incident resulting in the loss of a crew must be devastating for everyone who worked on those missions. “Was there something I could have done to prevent it?” likely ran through quite a few heads in the aftermath of those tragedies.

Any incident that kills astronauts causes blowback in Washington. It’s not just the conclusions of investigative committees that are filled with embarrassing facts, from the hatch that couldn’t open on the Apollo capsule, to the O-rings on the Challenger, to the loose insulation foam on the Columbia. Most dangerous of all, from NASA’s perspective, are the politicians who take advantage of the space agency’s misfortune, which could affect funding.

Best to be safe rather than sorry is now embedded in NASA culture. If it means that a return to the moon takes longer and costs more, so be it.

Not everyone is enamored of NASA’s obsession with crew safety. Space blogger and author of “Safe is Not an Option,” Rand Simberg, has some questions. 

“What is safe enough? When are you going to fly? How safe will it be then? If safety is the highest priority, why would you ever fly? Not flying is the only way to make safety the highest priority.”

All excellent questions. For the time being the federal government, NASA and the American people have decided that returning to the moon and going on to Mars is worth the money. But, would it be worth the cost of human life? 

No matter how careful one is, no matter how focused one is on crew safety, people will inevitably die while exploring space. Death is a fact of life in any human endeavor. People die driving to the supermarket just as readily as they can flying to the moon and back.

An acceptance of risk does not mean one should be given over to “go fever” and start cutting corners. A balance must be found between the two extremes if human civilization is to expand to the moon, Mars and beyond.

Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space policy, has published a political study of space exploration entitled Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? as well as The Moon, Mars and Beyond, and, most recently, Why is America Going Back to the Moon? He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.