The Falcon Heavy rocket made its fifth launch in five years on Sunday evening from Florida. However, this was the first launch of the triple-core booster in twilight, and this rare evening light provided some spectacular new insights into the liftoff and return of the rocket. //

Here's a highly compressed 1080p preview of my footage. This is easily the best launch footage I have ever captured, stay tuned for the full launch to landing in 4K!

I used to regret coming into this world mere months after the final Apollo mission, thinking I had missed the great age of exploration. But I no longer do. In just the last six months, I have seen the launch of the two most powerful rockets ever built, the Space Launch System and Starship. I have seen the naming of not one but two crews that will fly around the Moon, Artemis II and the dearMoon project. As NASA says, we are going.

Yet still more remarkably, during the last half-year, I have seen two dozen rockets land on a drone ship and fly again. We no longer treat this as remarkable, but we absolutely should. These now-routine Falcon 9 first stage landings at sea are a harbinger of the future. //

This is a far more wonderful and wild time in space than any that came before. There is incredible opportunity and peril. The future is unknowable but tantalizing.

So I no longer have any regrets about missing Apollo. I am thrilled to be alive at this very moment in human history. //

pokrface Senior Technology Editor

ARS STAFF

Re: the ubiquity of reusability — when I'm doing Saturn V tour shifts, one of the most common questions people ask is whether the giant Saturn V they're standing next to ever flew, and how NASA recovered it. I would guess that out of everyone who asks a question about the rocket, 50% of them ask that one in particular. When I tell them that no, the Saturn V was a one-and-done thing and most of it was destroyed during launch, most folks are genuinely flabbergasted.

SpaceX has gotten so good at reusable rocketry that it's almost unbelievable. It's similarly unbelievable how quickly the idea of rockets that return and land on their own has become nor just normalized, but the expected way things are supposed to work.

Like Berger says, that's one of the most amazing shifts in perspective I've ever seen in my entire life.

One of the most iconic launch sites in the world, Vandenberg Space Force Base’s Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6), will be leased by SpaceX. Confirmation came after Col. Rob Long, Space Launch Delta 30 (SLD 30) commander, signed a statement supporting SpaceX’s lease to launch Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy missions from the launch site.

While Thursday’s inaugural flight of Starship brought excitement, incredible images, and a roar to South Texas, it also tossed concrete miles away (and at vans). Numerous leaked images, aerial photos, and ocean-based photos have revealed the extensive damage to Stage 0. Everything you need to see has been compiled into one article.

A little more than seven years have passed since the Falcon 9 rocket made its first successful landing back on Earth. That was just SpaceX's 20th launch of the Falcon 9 rocket. Monday morning's launch was the 207th overall flight of the rocket. For a time, after that first landing, SpaceX had several misses as it continued to experiment with landing on a drone ship, as well as enduring a few mishaps.

However, since a drone ship landing failure in February 2021, SpaceX had reeled off 100 consecutive successful booster landings. Monday morning's return made for lucky no. 101.

In 2022, SpaceX launched 61 missions into orbit, breaking the company’s previous record of 31 missions set in 2021. So far in 2023, the company is on pace to break its own record again. Based on the launch cadence achieved in January and early February, SpaceX could easily pass the 80-launch mark this year. //

With the launch of Starlink Group 5-4, liftoff occurred five days, three hours, and 38 minutes after the Amazonas Nexus mission. This breaks SpaceX’s previous pad turnaround record which was also set at SLC-40, with just five days, nine hours, and 28 minutes between Hotbird-13F and Starlink Group 4-36 in October 2022.

Wallops Flight Center, VA -- Off in the southwest, the last colors of sunset lit up the rim of the sky, as a crescent Moon and two planets lined up above. It was a gorgeous scene, but one that everyone was ignoring. Instead, all eyes were focused on a bright patch of artificial light on a barrier island a couple of miles away. The lights there were focused on a small, slender needle—small enough to be hauled to the launch pad by a pickup truck.

For years, the Electron rocket and the company behind it had been stuck in limbo at the Virginia launch site, waiting on various approvals—for regulatory agencies to share enough paperwork with each other to convince everyone that the launch was safe. Then weather and the end-of-year holidays kept pushing the launch back. But on Tuesday, everything went as smoothly as it is possible to imagine, and the Electron shot to orbit almost as soon as the launch window opened. //

bruindrummer Ars Scholae Palatinae
10y

Its low weight also meant Electron left the pad in a hurry. Heavy launch vehicles often seem to hesitate shortly after leaving the pad, leaving my mind struggling to accept that their acceleration is enough to send them off to space. If Electron had an equivalent moment, it was over just as soon as it began.

The speed of a rocket off the pad is a reflection of the thrust to weight ratio (TWR) rather than simply the weight of the vehicle. The Saturn V had a TWR of about 1.2, and it had a nice, leisurely departure from the pad. The Space Shuttle, on the other hand, had a TWR of about 1.5, and it practically jumped from the pad. The Electron has a TWR of about 1.3, so it, too, is rather sporty on liftoff.

The chief of Arianespace could not be more clear: He does not want any competition for Vega C and Ariane 6, nor does he believe any commercial European company should have a chance to compete for the development of a next-generation reusable rocket.

However, what Israël did not say is also important. With a lift capacity of about 2 metric tons to low-Earth orbit but a price of nearly $40 million, the Vega rocket is not price-competitive with commercial rockets nor India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. Moreover, this Italian-made rocket has failed in three out of its last eight flights. Also, while Israël touts Ariane 6, this rocket does not yet exist. Europe has spent nearly $5 billion developing this booster, which may not fly until 2024 and will be four years late. //

MMarsh Ars Praefectus
7y
3,013
Subscriptor
Arianespace has always existed at the awkward intersection of the private and public sectors. As a commercial launch provider — indeed, the first such provider — it must continually prove its viability in the marketplace. As a symbol of European Union pride, backed by multiple governments, it is obliged to spread its operations out in inefficient ways and to make design and management decisions that stem more from politics than from engineering.

It's a structure and business model that, although inefficient, worked reasonably well for many years.

Until now.

If Europe wants to piss away a few billion euros on a vanity piece to say "hey look, we can still launch our own five birds a year from French Guiana" then they are welcome to do so. But I can think of much better ways to spend that money and those engineer-hours.

Caught the Falcon Heavy second stage separation and ignition on my flight. We were over the Turks and Caicos Islands at 34,000’. One of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.

You really shouldn't miss the images of the booster return.

by Eric Berger - Jan 16, 2023 1:14pm EST

The Falcon Heavy rocket made its fifth launch in five years on Sunday evening from Florida. However, this was the first launch of the triple-core booster in twilight, and this rare evening light provided some spectacular new insights into the liftoff and return of the rocket. //

Now the second-most powerful rocket in the world after NASA's Space Launch System, the Falcon Heavy always puts on a great show, with its 27 Merlin engines firing at once. It holds the record for the rocket with the most first-stage engines to reach orbit—at least, it will until SpaceX's Starship rocket flies later this year.

for me the news of the week is that SpaceX not only launched a Falcon Heavy rocket, but two other Falcon 9 missions on separate coasts as well in just five days. The operational challenges of this are immense and, I think, underappreciated outside of people directly involved in this kind of work. //

SpaceX approaches ludicrous cadence. In the movie Space Balls, "ludicrous speed" is the velocity attained by a spaceship traveling much faster than the speed of light. That is the velocity of cadence SpaceX is now approaching with its Falcon family of rockets. On Thursday morning, the company launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying 51 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. This was the company's fifth launch of 2023.

If you're keeping track at home ... As of January 19, SpaceX has launched a rocket every 3.8 days during this calendar year. Extrapolated out to a full year, SpaceX is on pace for 96 Falcon launches in 2023. While that probably won't happen, it indicates that SpaceX founder Elon Musk's prediction of 100 orbital launches this year was not all that, ahem, ludicrous.

I know very little about rocket launches, but one thing I thought I understood was that launches want to take off from as close to the equator as possible, which southwest England is not. Was there something special about the payload or this launch site? Or is this the launch equivalent of fighting with one arm tied behind your back? //

The optimal launch site for a given launch is at the same latitude as that launch's orbit's inclination. Depending on available downrange space, a particular site can also launch to orbits higher than its latitude, but never lower (without doglegs, which I'm going to ignore for the rest of this comment). So a low-latitude site is better in general since it makes more orbits possible, but it's not the best site for all orbits.

This launch by Virgin Orbit is going to polar orbit, which is extremely high-latitude. So it's possible from basically any launch site, and in fact is slightly better from high-latitude sites. //

It depends on your target orbit.
If you're shooting for an equatorial orbit, launching from near the equator gives you a boost from the Earth's speed of rotation, and saves you from needing to build a wasteful dog-leg or plane-change manoeuvre into the flight plan. This saves fuel and therefore lets you fly a bigger spacecraft with the same launch vehicle.
If you're shooting for some types of polar orbit, then the Earth's rotation is just an annoying thing you need to cancel out, so launching from a high latitude is more efficient.
The point of Virgin Orbit's approach is that you can launch the airplane from any convenient place with the right infrastructure, and fly to the best latitude for the type of mission you're doing that day before you light up the rocket, and you have good odds of bring able to launch without the weather problems that can cause delays when you're constrained to one fixed site.

There are also valid concerns about the safety of the SLS and Orion hardware. These vehicles are large, complex machines that will only fly infrequently, at most once a year. At such a flight rate, this launch system will always be experimental.

It can reasonably be argued that Starship is also not safe to launch on and land back on Earth. It, too, is a large and complex vehicle that will come back through Earth's atmosphere, dissipate heat, and perform delicate maneuvers before landing under the power of its own engines. Even though Starship will launch at least dozens of times per year, the vehicle is unlikely to meet NASA's safety requirements for humans for a long, long time. So Starship-only missions to the Moon are not a near-term solution.

Something even the prophet cannot predict
However, there is an alternative, the source suggested. NASA presently has a vehicle it has deemed safe enough to launch humans into space and back. That's SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft, which launches on the rocket that owns the world record for the longest streak of successful launches—the Falcon 9. By the mid-2020s, Crew Dragon will already have launched humans into space dozens of times.

The safest and lowest-cost means of completing an Artemis mission to the Moon, therefore, may involve four astronauts launching to a fairly high altitude in low-Earth orbit on Crew Dragon and rendezvousing with a fully fueled Starship. The astronauts would then fly to the Moon, land, and come back to rendezvous with Crew Dragon in Earth orbit. They would then splash down on Earth inside Dragon.

This architecture is less risky because it doesn't involve launching on SLS, nor does it require two rendezvous and dockings in lunar orbit, far from Earth. The crew would only spend a couple of more days aboard Starship than they would during the existing Artemis III plan, so Starship life support should be up to the task. If you care about costs, this plan also excludes the $4.1 billion launch cost of Orion and the SLS rocket and substitutes Crew Dragon, which would be on the order of one-twentieth of the cost.

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What they uncover off the coast of Florida, outside of the Triangle, marks the first discovery of wreckage from the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger in more than 25 years.

"Every time we saw a leak, it pretty quickly exceeded our flammability limits." //

So why does NASA use liquid hydrogen as a fuel for its rockets if it is so difficult to work with and there are easier-to-handle alternatives such as methane or kerosene? One reason is that hydrogen is a very efficient fuel, meaning that it provides better "gas mileage" when used in rocket engines. However, the real answer is that Congress mandated that NASA continue to use space shuttle main engines as part of the SLS rocket program. //

Among the idea's opponents was Lori Garver, who served as NASA's deputy administrator at the time. She said the decision to use space shuttle components for the agency's next-generation rocket seemed like a terrible idea, given the challenges of working with hydrogen demonstrated over the previous three decades.

"They took finicky, expensive programs that couldn't fly very often, stacked them together differently, and said now, all of a sudden, it's going to be cheap and easy," she told Ars in August. "Yeah, we've flown them before, but they've proven to be problematic and challenging. This is one of the things that boggled my mind. What about it was going to change? I attribute it to this sort of group think, the contractors and the self-licking ice cream cone." //

niwaxArs Tribunus Militumet Subscriptorreply3 days agoReader Favreportignore user
Update: At current funding levels, the delay to mid-october costs $495 million, or the total development cost of Falcon Heavy, or the total development cost of Falcon 9 plus four flights.

N2O4/Kerosene propellant rocket stage. Clustered to form Otrag launch vehicles. Pressure-fed, using cheapest possible propellants.

AKA: CPRU;Otrag. Status: Retired 1983. Thrust: 26.96 kN (6,061 lbf). Gross mass: 1,500 kg (3,300 lb). Unfuelled mass: 150 kg (330 lb). Specific impulse: 297 s. Specific impulse sea level: 240 s. Burn time: 140 s. Height: 16.00 m (52.00 ft). Diameter: 0.27 m (0.88 ft). Span: 0.27 m (0.88 ft).

Injection pressure: 40 - 15 bar; Thrust control: 100% - 40 %; Pressurization: Compressed air 66% tank filling in blow-down mode; Injector: Radial like on like; Chamber cooling: Ablative phenolic; Material of injector, valves, bulkheads: AlMg5; Material of cylindrical tank sections: cold rolled low carbon stainless steel.

Cost $ : 0.025 million. Propellant Formulation: (50% N2O4- 50% HNO3/Diesel fuel or Kerosene.

Otrag rockets would have been assembled from clusters of Common Rocket Propulsion Units (originally called modules, but von Braun pointed out that the M could be construed as "Missile", further fuelling the charges of OTRAG's critics). These CRPU's properties and dimensions were optimized to achieve one and one only goal: Minimum transport cost per unit of payload mass to low earth orbit and beyond. The $ 200 million spiral development and test program took 40 years, went through more than 1000 versions, included over 6000 static tests firings with total burning time approaching one million seconds, and achieved 14 suborbital test flights. The CRPU was human-rated and had a confidence level higher than 6-sigma. Main characteristics were:

• Thrust: 25,000 N (5,000 lbf)
• Oxidizer: High Density Acid (HDA) (50% N2O4- 50% HNO3) Den: 1.66 gr/cm^3
• Fuel: Diesel fuel or Kerosene
• Specific Impulse: First stage - 270 seconds, Stages 2 and 3 - 297 seconds vacuum
• Injection pressure: 40 - 15 bar
• Thrust control: 100% - 40 %
• Pressurization: Compressed air, 66% tank filling in blow-down mode
• Injector: Radial like on like
• Chamber cooling: Ablative phenolic
• Mass total: 1,500 kg
• Mass empty: 150 kg
• Material of injector, valves, bulkheads: AlMg5
• Material of cylindrical tank sections: cold-rolled low-carbon stainless steel
• Dimensions: Diameter 0.27 m, Length: 16 m
  A small launch vehicle with a 1 metric ton payload to low earth orbit would have consisted of 4 CRPU's in the third stage, 12 CRPU's in the second stage, and 48 CRPU's in the first stage. These were stacked in parallel in a quadratic ring arrangement. Larger vehicles would be assembled using hundreds or thousands of identical CRPU's. //

Orbital Transport-und-Raketen Aktiengesellschaft, Germany. Manufacturer of rocket engines and rockets. $200 million was spent from 1975-1987 by Lutz Kayser in a serious attempt to develop a low-cost satellite launcher using clusters of mass-produced pressure-fed liquid propellant modules. The project was finally squelched by the German government under pressure from the Soviet and French.

• Status: Retired 1983.
• First Launch: 1977-05-18.
• Last Launch: 1983-09-19.
• Number: 18 .
• Payload: 1,000 kg (2,200 lb).
• Thrust: 1,170.00 kN (263,020 lbf).
• Gross mass: 100,000 kg (220,000 lb).
• Height: 24.00 m (78.00 ft).
• Diameter: 0.76 m (2.49 ft).
• Apogee: 185 km (114 mi).

NASA confirmed Wednesday that it has awarded five additional crew transportation missions to SpaceX, and its Crew Dragon vehicle, to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station. This brings to 14 the total number of crewed missions that SpaceX is contracted to fly for NASA through 2030.

As previously reported by Ars, these are likely the final flights NASA needs to keep the space station fully occupied into the year 2030. While there are no international agreements yet signed, NASA has signaled that it would like to continue flying the orbiting laboratory until 2030, by which time one or more US commercial space stations should be operational in low Earth orbit.

Under the new agreement, SpaceX would fly 14 crewed missions to the station on Crew Dragon, and Boeing would fly six during the lifetime of the station. That would be enough to fill all of NASA's needs, which include two launches a year, carrying four astronauts each. But NASA has an option to buy more seats from either provider. //

SpaceX started flying operational missions to the space station in 2020, with the Crew-1 mission. Although Boeing's Starliner has a crewed test flight early next year, likely in February, its first operational mission will not come before the second half of 2023.

Additionally, there is some question about the availability of rockets for Starliner. Boeing has purchased enough Atlas V rockets from United Launch Alliance for six operational Starliner missions, but after that the Atlas V will be retired. During a news conference last week, Boeing's program manager for commercial crew, Mark Nappi, said the company is looking at "different options" for Starliner launch vehicles. These options include buying a Falcon 9 from a competitor, SpaceX, paying United Launch Alliance to human-rate its new Vulcan rocket, or paying Blue Origin for its forthcoming New Glenn booster. //

Since we now know how many flights each company will be providing NASA through the lifetime of the International Space Station, and the full cost of those contracts, we can break down the price NASA is paying each company per seat by amortizing the development costs.

Boeing, in flying 24 astronauts, has a per-seat price of $183 million. SpaceX, in flying 56 astronauts during the same time frame, has a seat price of $88 million. Thus, NASA is paying Boeing 2.1 times the price per seat that it is paying SpaceX, inclusive of development costs incurred by NASA. //

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ColdWetDog wrote:
Interesting that the $90 million lasts charged by Roscosmos isn't too far off the SpaceX cost.

The Russians were seen to be price gouging - and in a way that's true, the Soyuz development costs have been paid back years ago - but it wasn't too outrageous of a price in retrospect.

Of course, giving the money to SpaceX has many other advantages.

It's not a good comparison regarding Roscosmos seat price because the SpaceX "seat price" actually includes the complete capacity of the Dragon and it's trunk for cargo up mass and down mass.

McTurkeyArs Praetorianreplya day agoReader Favignore user
dr_lha wrote:

"Should we only allow billionaires and formal aerospace engineers to lead our way into space? "

Forget the billionaires part, I read like like "should we only allow formal doctors to perform surgeries?"

I completely agree that we don't need to have only billionaires leading the way. We don't even need to have exclusively people who've graduated college be the ones doing it, as there are self-taught engineers capable of delivering great results. But to denigrate the value of knowledge and education in one of the most complex fields of engineering, which has the capacity for considerable death and destruction if done poorly, seems like the kind of hubris that's going to be worthy of a group Darwin Award. //

ColdWetDogArs Tribunus Angusticlaviuset Subscriptorreplya day agoReader Favignore user
stdaro wrote:
I wonder if high volume megarocket launches are better off all happening from off-shore platforms.

mega-rockets and their required infrastructure are highly disruptive to their surroundings. Also, ideally, they're launched near open water to avoid overflying populated areas (ahem China), and the sea shore is environmentally sensitive. The shore areas that aren't under conservation of some kind are usually populated, and the sound and shock wave of launches isn't great to live near.

Once you're good at getting all the stuff on a barge and getting it out to a platform, you're not so limited by geography and you can launch from wherever is most advantageous for orbital mechanics. We could stop doing all our crewed LEO stuff in the weird inclinations that are easiest to get to, and just do stuff in equatorial orbits.

You could do all the polar orbits from the north pole once the ice caps are done melting :(

Ask anyone in the offshore oil business about how expensive it is. Sure, we can do lots of things on off shore platforms / repurposed boats but it is hella expensive. So you need sufficient volume to justify the capex and opex. We don't have that yet.

Now, Elon thinks, at some level, this is a good idea and has purchased (at fire sale prices) two slightly used semi submersible oil drilling rigs. Work is not proceeding as rapidly as is SpaceX's norm so it seems like their isn't the pressure to get this part of the Starship/SH system working isn't all that high.

So stay tuned to this space (umm).

And you don't need to go to the north pole for polar launches. You can do two things, move out of the way of land to the north of your launch site via boat or barge or just do a dogleg. With Falcon 9 and presumably Starship/SH they have enough delta v to do that.

Having a direct line of sight to the poles made sense in the early days when you were scrapping for every bit of deltaV. Now we have a bit more power so we can use it to make life easier. //

McTurkeyArs Praetorianreplya day agoReader Favignore user
etxdm wrote:

Having spent a good portion of my career as an engineer helping to start up new petrochemical plants, I sympathize with the SLS teams. I will say though, that although our facilities were every bit as complex as the SLS fueling and launch systems, we were expected to work through the gremlins and get things working well as soon as each section of equipment was built and transferred to operations. I'm puzzled about why valves and fans weren't completely debugged and commissioned before there was a rocket mated to the launch assembly. Anyone who has put together a critical path diagram tries to use as many parallel steps as possible.

That's not an efficient way to make more money. See, you're thinking like an engineer. SLS was not conceived by, managed by, or designed by engineers. Oh sure, the finer points were done by actual trained engineers. But the big picture? The order of tasks? The checklists? That all went through people whose sole professional purpose is the extraction of taxpayer wealth in order to preserve ongoing employment in specific organizations and locations. You don't maximize the plus in cost-plus contracting by being efficient with your engineering and processes, but rather the opposite. Technical problems? That sounds like justification to keep people working longer without having to actually.. you know.. expend physical hardware or deliver a functioning product (both of which would reduce the available options and excuses for arbitrary ongoing delays).

I wish I were being sarcastic.

Appearing before a House Science Committee hearing on NASA's Artemis program, Martin revealed the operational costs of the big rocket and spacecraft for the first time. Moreover, he took aim at NASA and particularly its large aerospace contractors for their "very poor" performance in developing these vehicles.

Martin said that the operational costs alone for a single Artemis launch—for just the rocket, Orion spacecraft, and ground systems—will total $4.1 billion. This is, he said, "a price tag that strikes us as unsustainable." With this comment, Martin essentially threw down his gauntlet and said NASA cannot have a meaningful exploration program based around SLS and Orion at this cost.

Later in the hearing, Martin broke down the costs per flight, which will apply to at least the first four launches of the Artemis program: $2.2 billion to build a single SLS rocket, $568 million for ground systems, $1 billion for an Orion spacecraft, and $300 million to the European Space Agency for Orion's Service Module. NASA, Martin said, had checked and confirmed these figures.

What is striking about these costs is that they do not include the tens of billions of dollars that NASA has already spent developing the Orion spacecraft since 2005 and the Space Launch System rocket since 2011. If one were to amortize development costs over 10 flights of the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft, the $4.1 billion figure cited by Martin would easily double. //

Later during the hearing, US Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas), asked whether the incremental costs of flying more than one Artemis mission a year would bring the cost down. Martin said he did not know for sure. Moreover, NASA is not planning to fly more than one Artemis mission a year, so the question is somewhat moot.

Martin, however, appeared to doubt that there would be significant cost savings due to the inefficiency of the program and its large aerospace contractors.

"Part of it goes to the efficiencies of the underlying contractors, like Boeing," Martin said. "One of the problems we saw in development of the SLS and Orion—it's a challenging development of course—but we did notice very poor contractor performance on Boeing's part, poor planning, and poor execution."

Then, unprompted, Martin continued to criticize the programs set up by Congress to fund the rocket and spacecraft. House and Senate members told NASA to use "cost-plus" contracts, which ensure that companies involved in the development and operation of these systems receive all of their costs, plus a fee. This tends to disincentivize timely work completed within a set budget. (Remarkably, NASA was told to continue using cost-plus contracts even after the development program.)

"We saw that the cost-plus contracts that NASA had been using to develop that combined SLS-Orion system worked to the contractors' rather than NASA's advantage," Martin said. //

In reality, no one should expect Congress to care about the high cost of the SLS and Orion program. The legislature created the programs this way. //

In fact, key members of Congress have been critical of NASA every time the agency has tried to break free of cost-plus contracting and use a more commercial approach through fixed-price contracts. That congressional skepticism has persisted even as the commercial approach has borne fruit. As tensions with Russia rise, for instance, NASA only has independent access to space because of the Crew Dragon spacecraft.

Lest anyone doubt this, House Science Committee Chair Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) took aim at NASA's commercial space efforts in her opening statement at the hearing. The context of her statement concerns NASA's desire to purchase commercial services for spaceflight in the future rather than oversee their development in-house like it did with SLS and Orion.

"I find the sum of these actions to be very troubling," Johnson said. "And it raises the question of whether NASA will even retain the capabilities and workforce within the agency that will be needed to get US astronauts to Mars if all of these privatization plans are realized."

At least it answers the question of where congressional priorities lie.