The Lunar Gateway station was only planned for the Artemis moon mission program because the latest-and-greatest NASA rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS) is too underpowered to send the excessively-heavy Orion crew vehicle to lunar orbit. So NASA planners had to come up with a way to send the crew vehicle “halfway” there. Gateway was to be a small space station in a kinda-sorta-lunar-ish-orbit (technically something called a halo orbit, long story) that’s basically just living space and docking ports and various support systems. The plan was for crew to launch from Earth in an Orion capsule on top of an SLS rocket, dock at Gateway, transfer to a lander, and then go to the moon’s surface. Reverse to process to get home again.
SLS is basically a bunch of legacy 1970s space shuttle tech that’s been lego’d together to make a “new” rocket. And it was done that way because the US senate, holder of NASA’s pursestrings, needed to keep that old defence industry partners who built space shuttle tech well-funded without having to have them reduce profits by actually spending on new R&D. And yes, this includes using solid-fuel boosters of the exact same design that killed the Challenger crew. It is literally an actual US law that NASA must build SLS.
Now here’s the “why is this important?” part of the story. The short version is that Gateway needs SLS, and SLS needs Gateway. Remove either from the plans, and the rationale for the existence of the other also goes away. This could be the first step in finally killing that ridiculous, dangerous, and wasteful pork project called SLS once and for all.
Expect a massive bilateral effort by congresspeople and senators to keep Gateway, at the behest of their paymasters in the MIC. SLS cannot be cancelled by NASA. It’s a law that they must build it. So there will be a political fight to get rid of it.
The Lunar Gateway station was only planned for the Artemis moon mission program because the latest-and-greatest NASA rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS) is too underpowered to send the excessively-heavy Orion crew vehicle to lunar orbit. So NASA planners had to come up with a way to send the crew vehicle “halfway” there. Gateway was to be a small space station in a kinda-sorta-lunar-ish-orbit (technically something called a halo orbit, long story) that’s basically just living space and docking ports and various support systems. The plan was for crew to launch from Earth in an Orion capsule on top of an SLS rocket, dock at Gateway, transfer to a lander, and then go to the moon’s surface. Reverse to process to get home again.
SLS is basically a bunch of legacy 1970s space shuttle tech that’s been lego’d together to make a “new” rocket. And it was done that way because the US senate, holder of NASA’s pursestrings, needed to keep that old defence industry partners who built space shuttle tech well-funded without having to have them reduce profits by actually spending on new R&D. And yes, this includes using solid-fuel boosters of the exact same design that killed the Challenger crew. It is literally an actual US law that NASA must build SLS.
Now here’s the “why is this important?” part of the story. The short version is that Gateway needs SLS, and SLS needs Gateway. Remove either from the plans, and the rationale for the existence of the other also goes away. This could be the first step in finally killing that ridiculous, dangerous, and wasteful pork project called SLS once and for all.
Expect a massive bilateral effort by congresspeople and senators to keep Gateway, at the behest of their paymasters in the MIC. SLS cannot be cancelled by NASA. It’s a law that they must build it. So there will be a political fight to get rid of it.