Kennedy Space Center, Florida –
Hoping to witness the launch of NASA’s Artemis 1 rocket to the moon is, so far, an exercise in frustration for Mark Franko.
“I was hoping to hear the noise and the power and the sound, I think it would have been pretty interesting to see it,” Franko told VOA as he and friends tried to watch a launch behind a local restaurant not far from Cape Canaveral . . But fuel leaks and other problems have twice delayed the most powerful rocket system ever from liftoff.
Despite the delays, Franko’s friend Mary Jane Patterson believes NASA should be in no rush to make the next launch attempt.
“I think they should take it back to the building and check it out completely and then go back in. I think it was too soon to come out after the first problem, and I think, whether it was PR. [public relations] or whatever, they were trying to push the envelope but at the same time they can’t. I don’t think you can be too cautious,” he said.
“This is the first time we’ve flown this rocket and this capsule,” noted astronaut Stan Love, who spoke to VOA before the first unsuccessful launch attempt. “There are many, many things that can go wrong. This is a test flight. Don’t get your expectations too high.”
FILE – Spectators await the launch of NASA’s next-generation lunar rocket, the Space Launch System, with its Orion crew capsule on top, on the Artemis 1 unmanned mission, which was later scrubbed, in Cap Canaveral, Florida, USA on August 29. , 2022.
But with hundreds of thousands of tourists flocking to Florida for each launch attempt, joining the world’s media gathered at Cape Canaveral, Love knows those expectations are high, at least in part because of the big price tag effort
The original cost of the SLS, or “Space Launch System,” which includes the rocket and thrusters that propel the Orion capsule into space, has grown from $10 billion to $20 billion. Each successful launch will cost about $4.1 billion. NASA’s inspector general expects the global Artemis program to reach $93 billion by the time the first astronauts return to the moon’s surface, targeted for 2025.
That’s if NASA can pull off the first uncrewed mission this year.
FILE – NASA astronaut Doug Hurley speaks at a news conference after arriving at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on May 20, 2020. (Bill Ingalls/NASA via AP)
“We have to make sure the vehicle is ready to go, we have to make sure it’s safe for the crew, and those things just take time,” said Doug Hurley, a retired NASA astronaut who fly the first manned mission. from Space X’s Crew Dragon capsule to the International Space Station. He now works for Northrop Grumman, one of the contractors working on Artemis, and is quick to respond to critics who say the current effort to return to the moon is behind schedule and over budget.
“I’ve heard it my whole career. Every aircraft I’ve been involved with, every spacecraft I’ve been involved with. We heard it with Crew Dragon flying — it’s been six years since the contract was awarded until now. we’ve flown. It takes time to build these complicated machines. But it’s worth it.”
As NASA works out the kinks while carefully weighing the risks of launching Artemis, cost isn’t the only factor.
“Mission success comes when we evaluate the flight after the fact,” said David Reynolds, NASA’s deputy program director, who added that the future of spaceflight depends on the performance of this first unmanned attempt to back to the moon
“As you check the various boxes, you reduce a certain amount of risk to manned flight. So once you’ve made that determination and we decide it’s safe enough to fly manned, we’ll have considered that a mission success.”
But Mark Franko, who had to return to Tempe, Arizona, before the next potential launch, wonders if the effort to see Artemis 1 in person was worth it.
“If you watch it on TV it would probably be closer,” he told VOA.
NASA is now looking at launch windows of late September and early October.