I’m kinda confused… I see the Space X test launch approaching and I’m just mind blown.
We went to the moon in 1969 ya? Why is it so difficult to re enact that? Why is SpaceX doing it and not NASA? I’ve seen/heard of a few unsuccessful test runs but I’m not super up to date with our space journeys. But don’t we have this technology/engineering capability?
I don’t mean to be arrogant but can someone explain it to me?
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> We went to the moon in 1969 ya? Why is it so difficult to re enact that?
> But don’t we have this technology/engineering capability?
1. **Cost**: In the 1960s, with the cold war and the space race, NASA had a lot of support from the public and Congress and so had much more money to play with. In the heyday of the Apollo program, NASA’s budget was more than 4% of the federal budget. Nowadays it is closer to 0.5%. Apollo developed the technology to send humans to the moon very expensively. We never had the technology to send humans to the moon at a sustainable cost.
2. **Risks**: While the Apollo Program Specification aims for a loss-of-crew risk of 1% over the course a crewed moon landing mission, a NASA report in 1965 found the actual risk estimate at the time was close to 4%. Also note the development of crewed spacecrafts during the 2010s has revealed additional flaws in the Apollo-era technology that were unknown before, bringing the actual risk higher than estimated during the 1960s. Nowadays NASA is much more risk-adverse when it comes to crew safely, requiring a loss-of-crew risk of lower than 0.2% over the course of a crew transport mission to and from the ISS. Using 1960s technology is simply not acceptable now.
3. **Technology**: Apple used to sell iPhone 1s. Would Apple sell the iPhone 1 again now? Of course not. On one hand, Apple has not make an iPhone 1 for almost 15 years and provisioning the capabilities to manufacturing them again is very costly. On the other hand, why would anyone want to buy an iPhone 1 now when they could buy a much more advanced iPhone 14 instead? Similarly, recreating the Saturn V rocket and the Apollo modules is infeasible today. For example [part of the Apollo Guidance Computer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_rope_memory) was made by hand by very skilled women and there is a very real possibility that there exists zero living humans with that skill today. Developing a brand new system would also incorporate the technological advancements in the 50+ years in between.
4. **Goals**: The Apollo program aims only to send humans to the surface of the moon, do some activities, and bring them back. The Artemis program is much more ambitions, including building [a space station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Gateway) orbiting around the moon, establishing long-term human presence and a permanent base on the moon, and eventually serve as a springboard for colonization of Mars and other planets. To do so, we must be able to launch a *lot* of stuff to the moon and that is infeasible with what the Apollo program was using.
> Why is SpaceX doing it and not NASA?
First things first, SpaceX is not developing the Starship *just* for Artemis. It has been in development for more than 6 years and is planned to be part of SpaceX’s commercial offering (which would vastly outstrip all of its competitors in terms of capabilities and cost). In fact a few private customers has already booked Starship launches.
Also, while Starship is critical to the success of Artemis, it is only a small part of the overall mission. The first [Artemis crewed moon landing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_3) will go like this:
1. An early version of the Lunar Gateway (developed by various space agencies across the world including NASA) would be deployed to the moon beforehand.
2. Astronauts launch on the SLS-Orion (both developed by NASA) and dock with the Gateway
3. SpaceX launches a Starship HLS (without crew) and dock with the Gateway
4. The astronauts transfer from the Orion to the Starship
5. The astronauts descend to and ascend from the moon surface on the Starship
6. The astronauts transfer from the Starship to the Orion and returns to Earth on the Orion.
NASA is very open to partnering with private space companies. In recent years, these often come in the form of service contracts. Simply put, NASA put out a set of specifications of the services they need (e.g. [sending cargo to the ISS after the retirement of the Shuttle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Resupply_Services)) and allow private companies to submit proposals on how they plan to provide those services. After reviewing, NASA sign contracts with one or more of those companies to pay them a fixed sum of money for the R&D of the technology needed and the services provided. NASA essentially outsources some of their R&D, incentivizes private companies to find cost-effective solutions to their problems, and frees themselves to do more stuff.
The Human Landing System (HLS) is one of those contracts. SpaceX saw that and realizes it is quite easy to satisfy the requirements using a variant of their in-development Starship (which they are developing anyway).
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