NASA’s Artemis 2 Mission Is Facing New Delays

NASA is currently in the process of upgrading some of its critical infrastructure necessary for the future Artemis missions and humans return to the Moon. This mainly includes ground systems such as the mobile launcher or even vehicle assembly building.

However, a recent report from the GAO found that Artemis 2, scheduled less than a year from now in September 2025, is at risk of being delayed.

Credit:

Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
0:27 - New Delays
4:27 - More Artemis Progress

[rockets-dont-makegood-toas]

It's crazy how it takes them longer to prove a crew access arm is safe to use than it took spacex to add an entire water deluge system to a severely damaged pad after IFT-1.

[SebastianWellsTL]

Why am I not surprised?

At least no one can say now that SpaceX is hindering the Artemis mission.

[jtjames]

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

[Markaras]

I mean it's fine, it's so awesome that humanity is willing to space travel and is capable of doing it.

[plainText]

I think EGS is the lesser issue, at least for Artemis 2. Sure ML1 has no schedule margin left, but that just means they are cutting close. Maybe they'll be a couple months late, who knows, but nothing major.
It's the result of the Orion heatshield investigation that I'm the most worried about. If they need to replace the heatshield, that'll definitely take longer than EGS to be ready for Artemis 2.

[drfranks]

A bit sad and depressing to see just how slow of a pace these government run programs move at. Private industry is outpacing SLS and has made it obsolete before it even got to fly people. Those RS25 engines are 25-50 mill each, they were designed to be reused over and over again... not tossed into the ocean as toxic trash. Seriously expensive job program that never seems to get the job done, Sept 2025 launch ??? (expected to be DELAYED) . .. what a sad not-funny joke.

[hawkdsl]

All the uninformed fandom should go watch some everyday astronaut videos about Artemis program, and spacex's role with SLS and the system as a whole.

[steamfire]

It isn't customary in US english to prounounce VAB as a word. Individual letters of the vehicle assembly building spelled as an acronym are generally most comfortable for listeners.

[Papershields]

Just as long as they complete the mission some delay is fine in my mind. We’ve been waiting 50 years to get back to the moon, just don’t cancel now

[michaelreid]

Anything involving the SLS based on its exaggerated costs should be rethought.
The SLS was not based on the development of any new technologies or improved workflow to reduce costs. However private industry has developed innovative designs offering significant savings. That justifies starting again

[princecharon]

The way things are not progressing, I suspect that the Artemis 2 mission, if it happens with something like the current plan, will launch no earlier than 2026. It'd be nice to be wrong, though, as long as they can do it safely.

[hawkdsl]

Keep in mind that GAO reports are just projections. They also tend to exaggerate.

[bluesteel]

They need to get rid of this piece of crap. If they do not want to launch on starship, then launch using a dragon/falcon combo and then after starship fuels up, move to it and go to the moon. It would be billions of dollars cheaper to do that.

[eddjordan]

this a fine channel thank you for these updates.

[BrainRobo]

I am not in favor of creating a major potential of a monopoly by SpaceX. However I think Nasa and Congress should reconsider an Artemis SLS launch and for the cost of an SLS launch provide a fixed cost contract to SpaceX to review and implement a lunar ferry system using a combination of Crew Dragon and Starship HLS. This would allow the usage of all SpaceX capabilities with minimum changes to existent hardware and these would be targets aligned with HLS thus not introducing additional hidh risk designs. The probably easiest solution would probably be:
- Use of Falcon 9 crew dragon to insert astronauts to LEO.
- dock with a starship variant that functions as a ferry at LEO and ferry to the lunar orbit.
- do same lunar mission profile.
- ferry back with starship to LEO and dock with either the same capsule or another crew dragon capsule.

This is of course provided that the total number of starship launch costs are kind of reasonable.

Checked the delta-v requirements, for LEO to NRHO the estimated dv by NASA is 3650m/s, hence a ferry would require 7300m/s of dv. Assuming a variant of Starship v3 which has a prop load of 2300 metric tons, dry mass of 200tons expended versions and payload of 100 tons for buffer of human rating... plus an Isp of 360 for raptor vacuum v3 this would yield a delta v of ~7600m/s now this might be a constraint due to safety factors however there are solutions around it which reduce this issue.

[lyricbread]

Your tax dollars at work folks! SLS is finished and NASA should focus on anything BUT launch vehicles.

[vmoutsop]

I would understand if SLS was some kind of technology showcase of what might be possible but it uses old technology and can't get out of its own way. Just shut the thing down and do something innovative, new and out there, just not this crap. It's embarrassing.

[stevieathome]

The term, "schedule margin" sounds really cool 😎! It makes project management incompetence sound scientific (?) - especially in certain organizations. If you have "no schedule margin", you proclaim that you are a macho risk taker, wildly living on the edge.🤠

"We will barely be able to pull this off - if, we do, it took a lot of guts.... but, if we don't succeed.., we had no schedule margin."

[Kyzyl_Tuva]

Your videos are great. Recommendation: you use so many acronyms that it is difficult to follow. Maybe say each word several times throughout a video and/or have a reference to each one used in comments section. Thank you for your work.

[jamess.]

god get rid of SLS. NASA needs to get out of the rocket business and just do deep space exploration. The commercial companies can launch the probes.