NASA Space Launch System Artemis: My Opinion on Its Value

Courtesy of NASA

What if the U.S. had no heavy-lift capa­bil­i­ty after the Space Shut­tle? As that era fad­ed into his­to­ry, NASA’s Space Launch Sys­tem (SLS) emerged as the Unit­ed States’ indis­pens­able heavy-lift rock­et, fill­ing a crit­i­cal void in deep-space explo­ration capa­bil­i­ties and pro­pelling human­i­ty beyond low Earth orbit. The Sen­ate con­ceived and fund­ed the rock­et, born from the ash­es of the 2011 Space Shut­tle retire­ment. It revived ele­ments of the ear­li­er Ares V con­cept from the can­celed Con­stel­la­tion pro­gram. SLS addressed a glar­ing absence of viable launch options. Fal­con 9 achieved its first suc­cess­ful orbital flight only in 2010 and was still in its ear­ly, unre­li­able stages, while ambi­tious con­cepts like Star­ship had yet to be proposed.

As the world’s most pow­er­ful oper­a­tional rock­et, it pow­ers the Artemis pro­gram by deliv­er­ing the Ori­on space­craft and lunar infra­struc­ture, enabling sus­tain­able Moon bases and lay­ing the foun­da­tion for future Mars expe­di­tions. By blend­ing proven Shut­tle-era tech­nolo­gies, includ­ing the RS-25 engines repur­posed and enhanced from Shut­tle mis­sions, with mod­ern inno­va­tions, the SLS pri­or­i­tizes astro­naut safe­ty, mis­sion reli­a­bil­i­ty, and inter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion, while dri­ving eco­nom­ic growth through advance­ments in mate­ri­als sci­ence, propul­sion, and engi­neer­ing. It spurred inno­va­tions in addi­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing and high-strength alloys applic­a­ble to aero­space and auto­mo­tive sectors—that con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit indus­tries here on Earth. As SLS evolves along­side emerg­ing com­mer­cial sys­tems, its roots in Ares V remind us of the endur­ing val­ue of strate­gic gov­ern­ment invest­ment in space exploration.

Courtesy of NASA

Strategic Mistake or Risk Reduction

Some viewed the addi­tion of SLS to the inven­to­ry as a strate­gic mis­take, believ­ing the fund­ing would have been bet­ter allo­cat­ed to com­mer­cial options. How­ev­er, in 2011, the com­mer­cial capa­bil­i­ties were in their infancy—as evi­denced by ear­ly Fal­con 9 reli­a­bil­i­ty issues, includ­ing mul­ti­ple launch fail­ures in its first few years. The “old space” indus­try right­ly ques­tioned the pos­si­bil­i­ty of hav­ing viable com­mer­cial access to space with­out sub­stan­tial sub­si­dies. With­out a big rock­et, access to the Moon or pro­vid­ing a heavy-lift option to low Earth orbit was a gap that need­ed to be filled. SLS was obvi­ous­ly the risk reduc­tion of the system.

Artemis II and Beyond

Now, on the eve of Artemis II, SLS is achiev­ing its pur­pose: get­ting us back to the Moon. My pref­er­ence would be to keep it around as long as nec­es­sary to ensure that com­mer­cial ele­ments can pick up the slack. Both SpaceX and Blue Ori­gin are like­ly to fill that gap in the next few years. I think SLS will fly for Artemis III and IV. But oth­er launch sys­tems will con­tin­ue the pro­gram. We can view SLS as an impor­tant piece to ensure a capa­bil­i­ty when hypo­thet­i­cal com­mer­cial capa­bil­i­ty had yet to be proven. I hope his­to­ry treats SLS kindly.

References