Why the Artemis program is a political stunt

1 07 2026

by Dennis Meredith, author Earthbound: The Obstacles to Human Space Exploration and the Promise of Artificial Intelligence.

When NASA introduced the Artemis III astronauts recently, it mounted a performance worthy of the intros of wrestlers at the UFC White House cage match. Both featured pulse-pounding music, macho males, flashy costumes, and hyperbolic rhetoric. The Artemis ceremony was capped with the Artemis II astronauts handing off to the Artemis III crew a golden baton—a color known to be in favor with the current administration.

NASA recognizes that it needs all the drama possible to sell the Artemis lunar program because it is in the end driven by politics, not science or commerce. NASA is seeking some $30 billion to build its Moon Base, and is already lobbying Congress for a down payment of billions of dollars. For the huge price tag, it knows that politics must provide the propulsive force—for example, the nationalistic push to beat China to the moon.

In its funding strategy, NASA has two modes, according to space exploration advocate Robert Zubrin: it spends money to do things, and it does things to spend money. Spending money to do things is exemplified by the stunningly successful unmanned space science programs—prime examples being the brilliantly engineered James Webb Space Telescope and Mars rovers. They have yielded a wealth of new knowledge about the universe and about Mars.

Doing things to spend money is an apt description of the Artemis program, as seen in its planning process. Normally, when designing a scientific mission such as a space telescope or planetary lander, planners first formulate the scientific questions they want answered. Then they design a mission to explore those questions. But the Artemis program reverses that mode. That is, NASA is planning a moon base without a clear scientific or economic justification.

Artemis advocates certainly haven’t come up with a substantive, detailed case for the moon base. Wrote space journalist Jeff Foust, “NASA has said little about specific requirements for the facility. . . even general descriptions of activities that will take place there.”

Indeed, White House space official Charlie Powell gave a particularly vague answer about why the moon base should be built: “There’s a lot of reasons to build the Moonbase. The first is because we can,” he was quoted by Foust as declaring during a session at the Space Foundation’s Space Symposium. Powell added, “The second reason to build a Moonbase is that we must.”

So, salient questions are: If NASA doesn’t know what it’s going to build, and for what purpose, how do they know the program will cost $30 billion? And given that the Artemis program has already suffered huge cost overruns, is it rather likely that $30 billion is merely a baseline guesstimate?

The Artemis program is critical to NASA’s very survival, given that human space exploration comprises about half of its budget. NASA’s staunch advocacy for human space exploration reflects a cynical adage coined decades ago: “No Buck Rogers, no bucks.” And while Artemis has remained safe from budget cuts, NASA’s unmanned science missions are threatened with drastic reductions.

Cosmic cheerleaders promote Artemis

Artemis’s political attractiveness underpins that security. As President Trump pithily put it during an Oval Office event with the Artemis II astronauts, “I like space.”

Politicians have been among the most prominent cosmic cheerleaders for the human space program, along with profit-seeking aerospace corporations, and billionaires with space visions such as Elon Musk.

Politicians find space missions advantageous because rocket launches are far more public and thrilling than, say, a new highway or a sewage treatment plant. So, politicians can bask in the reflected glow of space missions for which they have helped gain funding. They also benefit from the fact that the space program creates jobs in their district’s NASA centers and NASA-funded companies.

Aerospace companies are also top cosmic cheerleaders because many reap profits from cost-plus contracts by which NASA has often paid industry to develop space hardware. In this funding scheme, NASA gives companies whatever it costs to build a system, plus an additional fee for profit. So, companies have no incentive to save money. In fact, they are incentivized to draw out contracts as long as possible, leading to the massive cost overruns, cited earlier. What’s more, NASA’s changing priorities have meant billions of dollars more in cost overruns for hardware that was ultimately cancelled.

A 2023 report of the Government Accounting Office (GAO) declared that NASA “does not plan to measure production costs to monitor the affordability of . . . the Space Launch System (SLS).” It found that “NASA plans to spend billions of dollars to continue producing multiple SLS components, such as core stages and rocket engines, needed for future Artemis missions.” The report said that NASA itself told GAO that “at current cost levels, the SLS program is unaffordable.”

As might be expected, aerospace firms spend heavily on lobbying. According to the website OpenSecrets.org, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and other aerospace companies spend well over $10 million each per year to lobby Congress and the executive branch. Such money doesn’t even count campaign contributions by the companies’ political action committees and employees.

Politization of the Artemis program is obvious in its politically driven timeline. For example, the Trump administration has set a 2028 deadline for the Artemis moon landing, before the end of Donald Trump’s term.

Politicians can kill missions

Ironically, politicians are also mission-killers, perfectly willing to squeeze the budgets for space programs or to cancel them when they show waning political payoff.

For example, politics was primarily behind cancellation of the final three lunar missions of the Apollo program. Richard Nixon decided the program had achieved its goal of beating the Soviets to the moon, and polls showed low public enthusiasm for lunar exploration. A long list of other US human space programs also met their end due to changing political winds, including:

  • Man In Space Soonest, an Air Force program to orbit an astronaut, canceled in 1958
  • Dyna-Soar, an Air Force program to develop a crewed spaceplane canceled in 1963
  • The Manned Orbital Development System, an Air Force plan for a military space station, canceled in 1963
  • Manned Orbiting Laboratory, a follow-on to the Dyna-Soar project, canceled in 1969
  • Rockwell X-30, a demonstrator project to create a single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft, canceled in 1993
  • Venturestar, a reusable single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane, canceled in 2001
  • Project Constellation, NASA’s intended successor to the Space Shuttle, canceled in 2010.

If this dismal record is any guide, the Artemis moon base will also likely fall victim to political and budgetary vicissitudes, with the burden of its $30-billion price tag trumping the race with China.

The compelling reality of AI

Artemis could also fall victim to the reality that rapidly evolving artificially intelligent (AI) robot rovers and space probes could explore the moon and other bodies more comprehensively and cost-effectively than could a few humans trundling about in bulky space suits.

Robots don’t have lungs that could be shredded by the clinging, razor-sharp lunar dust. They don’t have bodies that could be decimated by lunar radiation actually more intense than in deep space—due to additional secondary radiation triggered by high-energy cosmic rays impacting lunar soil. And robots don’t have muscles or bones that would weaken in weightless space or the moon’s one-sixth Earth gravity.

Rather, they are built to be radiation-hardened, to function in any gravity environment, and with a design engineered for each mission. Humans come in only one basic model.

And unlike humans, to survive robots don’t need a narrow temperature range or a constant supply of air, food, and water. Thus, they don’t require the gargantuan amounts of money, fuel, and supplies necessary for human missions.

NASA and private companies are already developing and using AI extensively to land rockets, dock spacecraft, design hardware and missions, assist astronauts, monitor astronaut health, manage maintenance, navigate satellites, analyze data, track space debris, detect planetary geological features, and recognize patterns in astronomical images.

The Artemis planners have certainly recognized the value of AI. The moon base project’s initial phase involves dispatching autonomous rovers and drones to scout the landing region and prepare for future surface operations.

NASA is also creating AI software for robots to make tactical decisions about exploring alien worlds. Its NeBula (Networked Belief-aware Perceptual Autonomy) system enables robots to conduct explorations without direct human guidance.

And NASA is already building AI-piloted robots for exploration. Its CADRE (Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration) lunar lander, to be launched later this year, will unload three briefcase-sized rovers to roll about the surface and use cameras, navigation sensors, and ground-penetrating radar to map the terrain in 3D. Linked via a radio network, they will coordinate their mapping with no human intervention.

Farther out in the solar system, the car-sized Dragonfly rotorcraft, to be launched in 2028, will autonomously explore Saturn’s moon Titan, deciding where to land to drill samples in the ice and analyze them.

While AI robots would not come across as attractively personable in news conferences, collaborating with scientists, they could explore exotic realms from Martian caves to Europa’s oceans to Venus’s murky, superhot atmosphere. The rich trove of visual data they transmit to Earth could generate a Virtual Cosmos that all of humanity could explore, experiencing the wonders of the solar system.


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Is the race for moon missions lunacy?

6 01 2026

by Dennis Meredith

(Reprinted from SpaceNews)

(Update: NASA has decided that the Artemis 3 mission will not land on the moon, but will conduct tests in low-Earth orbit. The lunar landing is planned for Artemis 4.]

Even as NASA prepares for its Artemis 2 moon-circling mission, an Artemis 3 lunar-landing mission has suffered multiple delays, with no assurance of a launch before 2030. That may be a good thing because NASA still has not overcome critical hazards and technological gaps of lunar exploration. These problems must be solved before we can establish a safe, productive long-term human presence on the moon. I  hope that the tenure of Jared Isaacson will bring an energized NASA and produce the wise long-term planning and sufficient funding needed to tackle them.

While NASA has long recognized a host of severe “Red Risks” of deep-space travel and lunar missions—including radiation health effects, degraded vision, cognitive decline, and deficient food and nutrition—it has not solved them.

In particular, NASA does not know how to protect astronauts from space radiation, especially from the highest energy cosmic rays. Astronauts on the lunar surface will actually experience higher radiation levels than they did on their trip to the moon. The moon itself creates radiation when high-energy galactic cosmic rays impact the lunar soil, or regolith. This impact radiation produces an additional dose of neutrons and gamma radiation, revealed measurements made by the Chinese lunar lander Chang’E 4. Researchers found radiation levels about 2.6 times higher than those aboard the International Space Station because the station is partially shielded by the Earth’s protective magnetosphere.

To reduce astronauts’ radiation exposure, engineers have proposed covering a lunar base with regolith, but cosmic ray impacts on the regolith would generate a secondary radiation cascade. Scientists have proposed adding a layer of radiation-absorbing materials such as plastic. However, they have done only theoretical studies, and such additional shielding would mean transporting and installing large masses of the material.

Space radiation could not only cause chronic effects, but be lethal. For example, one of the largest solar energetic particle events ever recorded occurred between the Apollo 16 and 17 missions. Its radiation was so intense that if the Apollo astronauts had been en route to the moon or on its surface, they would have absorbed potentially lethal radiation doses because spacecraft hulls offer very little protection.

The lunar surface also presents hazards that NASA’s exploration plans have not yet addressed. Among the greatest of those hazards is lunar dust. While dust is a mere annoyance on Earth, it is a major hazard for lunar exploration. Unlike terrestrial dust whose edges have been dulled by wind and water, jagged lunar dust particles are the equivalent of microscopic shards of broken glass. The dust was created over eons by the impact on the lunar surface of micrometeorites. Making the dust even more hazardous is that it is electrically charged from solar wind bombardment, which makes it cling to suits, walls, even astronaut’s skin and lungs.

The Apollo astronauts found their suits covered in clinging dust; suffered sneezing and congestion of “lunar hay fever;” and were assailed by the dust’s cloying smell they described as like burnt gunpowder.

A NASA report on the effects of lunar dust during the Apollo missions found that it produced “vision obscuration, false instrument readings, dust coating and contamination, loss of traction, clogging of mechanisms, abrasion, thermal control problems, seal failures, and inhalation and irritation.”

A report on the lung effects of lunar dust concluded that, “The combination of altered pulmonary deposition of extraterrestrial dust and the potential for the dust to be highly toxic likely makes dust exposure the greatest threat to the lung in planetary exploration.”

What’s more, the lower lunar gravity means that inhaled dust will penetrate deeper into the lungs. On Earth, gravity exerts a protective effect, since inhaled particles tend to settle in the larger airways, where they can be cleared by the lung’s cilia. But as a NASA research description asserted, in lunar gravity particle clearance rates “. . . are likely to be substantially reduced compared to that in 1G, resulting in increased residence times of these particles in the periphery of the lung, enhancing their potential to cause lung damage.”

Moon landings will launch high-speed “dust bullets” that could damage equipment even far from a landing site. Rocks and gravel-sized material could travel up to six football fields away in the low lunar gravity, found calculations of the potential trajectory of such moon dust.  Fine dust and sand could be blasted hundreds of kilometers away, at speeds up to 1,000 meters per second (2,200 miles per hour)—about as fast as a bullet.

The Apollo 12 astronauts discovered how damaging such ejected material could be after they touched down 183 meters from the Lunar Surveyor III lander—a distance they thought would not damage the lander. However, an analysis found that the lander was severely sandblasted by the dust, which even penetrated its interior.

Another surface hazard could be the moon’s undulating surface, which could prove treacherous to navigate. And, the stark lighting could play tricks on astronauts’ vision. For example, at the proposed lunar south pole Artemis 3 landing site, the sun is constantly at a low angle, meaning that astronauts must cope with either blinding sunlight or the total darkness of shadows in the airless environment.

Key technologies for lunar exploration have not yet been developed by NASA and private contractors. For example, SpaceX’s Starship lunar lander meant to ferry astronauts to the surface is long delayed and awaits major technological demonstrations such as on-orbit fuel transfer.  And the Gateway orbiting lunar space station—meant as a base camp and research lab—has not yet even begun construction.

Gateway has sparked considerable controversy. Aerospace engineer and Mars Society president Robert Zubrin called the plan “severely defective.” He wrote, “It will cost a fortune to build, a fortune to maintain, and it will add to the cost, risk, and timing constraints of all subsequent missions to the moon or Mars by adding an unnecessary stop along the way.”

If NASA is to advance to long-term missions, it needs to develop a lunar surface infrastructure—for example, dependable power generation. Solar power would not be reliable on the moon because of the two-week-long lunar nights and that sunlight would not reach into deep craters or lava tubes. Only nuclear power could offer such a baseline source to power oxygen generation, heat, light, transportation, mining, materials processing, and communications.

Such nuclear power systems are still in the very early stages of development and face significant challenges. The massive generators weighing many tons would still have to be transported, landed, deployed, and maintained. They would have to function for years with little maintenance in vacuum or near-vacuum conditions, endure huge temperature fluctuations, and be protected against abrasive lunar dust.

Long-term missions would also need automated machinery for lunar mining and construction. Developing such technology might seem straightforward. After all, excavators routinely operate on Earth. And farming and other equipment already exist that can operate automatically.

But machinery used on the moon must function in low gravity, a vacuum, and amid abrasive lunar dust. It  must also survive the two-week lunar night of electronics-killing temperatures that plunge to -240 degrees Celsius (-400 degrees Fahrenheit).  NASA has ranked such survival as its top technical challenge.

Lunar excavators will need cameras and other sensors to scan the landscape, decide which rocks to pick up, and test the properties of the regolith to be excavated. They must constantly watch for hazards from rocks and cavities. A mistake could mean being broken, getting stuck, or even being buried forever.

None of this machinery has been invented, and NASA has compiled a long list of “shortfalls,” of technologies needed for habitation, power, thermal management, propulsion, and other capabilities.

And, just testing such machines is far more complex than simply having them dig dirt on some terrestrial vacant lot. Testing would require highly complex, large-scale Lunar Proving Grounds. The facility would have to mimic the vacuum, temperature, lighting, radiation, chemistry, electrostatics, dust, variable terrain, and other features of the lunar surface.

The word lunacy derives from the Latin “luna,” reflecting the belief that the moon can trigger insanity. Perhaps the moon has, indeed, caused a form of insanity among planners who seek to send humans to the lunar surface before solving the serious hazards and obstacles the moon presents. Such efforts require long-term political commitment, careful planning, and adequate funding, none of which exist now.

Dennis Meredith is the author of Earthbound: The Obstacles to Human Space Exploration and the Promise of Artificial Intelligence.


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