The world witnessed the preamble to a changing of the guard in space as four astronauts climbed aboard the Orion spacecraft built by Lockheed Martin and awaited the countdown. They launched into space Wednesday on a 10-day journey around the moon by the Space Launch System rocket, a NASA initiative led by Boeing with help from subcontractors Northrop Grumman and Aerojet Rocketdyne.

As any space junky will tell you, those companies are legendary players in the history of U.S. space exploration. They were key contractors on the Apollo missions that landed astronauts on the moon beginning in 1969, allowing America to win the space race against Russia and cementing the country’s status as the dominant superpower. After some 50 years, their time driving NASA's space explorations appears to be ending.

But although the legacy space companies are all back to play key roles in this mission, they won’t be spearheading NASA’s ambitious seven-year, $20 billion plan to build a permanent moon base. For that to happen, Boeing, Lockheed and the others will have to figure out how to remain relevant in a new space market increasingly dominated by commercial interests instead of NASA’s budget. The drive to turn a profit means that the delays, the billions of dollars of budget overruns and the structurally high per-launch costs that have plagued space programs in the past will no longer be tolerated.

The reconfigured Artemis program will require a steady cadence of launches from rockets and spacecraft that have much lower operational costs and can carry more payload. That future belongs to the producers of reusable rockets, led by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and with Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin scrambling to catch up. Other startups — Rocket Lab and Stoke Space Technologies — are building reusable rockets, a technology that has lowered launch costs dramatically and which the legacy space companies lack.

SpaceX, with its workhorse reusable Falcon 9 rocket, unlocked the secret to making money in space by launching more than 10,000 low-Earth-orbit satellites that provide fast internet for rural residence and any moving vehicle whether ship, aircraft or recreational vehicle. Blue Origin’s partially reusable rocket made its first commercial flight in November.

With profit margins in focus, there’s an incentive for SpaceX and Blue Origin to be as efficient as possible — an essential ingredient to commercial space that has been lacking since the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was created in 1958. The timing couldn’t be better. The U.S. is in a race with China to create a permanent base from which the moon’s resources of water and minerals can be claimed and tapped.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman laid out a streamlined plan to return to the moon that contemplates a transition from the legacy companies to the commercial-space newcomers. NASA is scrapping Gateway, an expensive space station orbiting the moon that would have acted as a transition toward building a moon base. Instead, it’s planning to land equipment and material to erect a base and search for moon ice and minerals. That will require a twice-a-year launch cadence.

The hardware is legacy as well. The Space Launch System, or SLS, is powered by the same engine design used on the Space Shuttle program, which was retired in 2011. The SLS rocket was supposed to end the U.S.’s embarrassing dependency on Russia’s Soyuz rocket to send astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station. That nearly nine-year reliance on Russia finally was broken when SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft carried its first crew to the ISS in 2020.

Lockheed’s Orion spacecraft has its roots in the Constellation program, a return-to-the-moon plan announced in 2004 under President George W. Bush and eliminated during the administration of President Barack Obama in 2010. Orion can orbit the moon, but isn’t capable of landing there. A single moon launch of Orion on the SLS rocket is estimated to cost more than $4 billion. "The space ecosystem has been dramatically upturned by the reusability,” said Jud Ready, the executive director of the Space Research Institute at Georgia Tech. The legacy space companies "are going to have to modify their operations.”

The SLS and Orion require a human landing system to take astronauts from Orion to the lunar surface. NASA has contracted with both SpaceX and Blue Origin to build these landers. This complex system will likely be streamlined in the future with a spacecraft that can reach the moon and land directly with astronauts aboard. A fuel depot in low-Earth orbit will be necessary to provide the energy needed for the long journey to the moon. These commercial space companies will have to prove their safety case for ferrying humans to and from the moon.

Counting on newcomers for NASA’s moon strategy comes with risk. SpaceX’s new Starship spacecraft will have to refuel in space to reach the moon and land — a capability that has yet to be tested. For the human landing system, SpaceX is building a version of the Starship spacecraft that is stripped of heatshields and navigational fins. It will still require in-space refueling to reach the moon. A lot can go wrong and Musk has a reputation for setting overly optimistic technology timelines. NASA’s Isaacman said the agency will embed experts across the supply chain to head off delays and budget overruns.

The big advantage of Starship is that both the rocket booster and the spacecraft are recovered either on the launchpad or an ocean-faring drone ship and can be refurbished quickly and launched again. SpaceX has proven it can do this with the Falcon 9, a rocket system that has been reused partially more than 430 times and has set a record of one rocket booster being flown more than 30 times. And unlike the SLS and Orion, Starship doesn’t depend solely on NASA to fund its development. SpaceX is cash-flow positive with sales from its Starlink internet service.

Musk also has a grand plan of using Starship to launch tens of thousands of data-center satellites that will be powered by tapping near round-the-clock sun, which is more intense in space. Investors are excited about Starlink’s lead on satellite internet and this data-centers-in-space opportunity, which is driving demand for an initial public offering of SpaceX even after it recently bought Musk’s xAI startup. This sale of shares could raise $75 billion and value the company at $1.75 trillion.

This 10-day trip around the moon is important to sustain momentum of the Artemis program, which has the goal of landing humans on the moon by 2028. The program won’t be a success until NASA lets go of outdated hardware and adopts the recycling tactics of commercial-space newcomers.

© The Japan Times