US China space race and moon bases

WNYC Studios is supported by the new museum See the arrt of Tomorrow todayay, at Manhattan's only museum devoted exclusively to contemporary art New Humans Memories of the Future, the first exhibition to fill the new museum's entire recently expanded campus, brings together the work of more than two hundred artists from around the world to consider what it means to be human in the face of major social and technological change tickets or become a member today at newmuseum. org. WNYC Studios is supported by Ou When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing Odu solves this It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales OdDu is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need Check out Odu at Odoo. com That's ODOo. com Science Friday is supported by the Allen Institute For decades, brain disease research has faced one major challenge We still don't know enough about how the brain actually works Now, the Brain Health accelerator is changing that, combining human brain data, clinical knowledge, and cutting edge technology to unlock powerful new discoveries about our brains The future of brain health is here, learen how they're doing it at Allaninstitute. org slash brain health. Hi, I'm Jane Lyindolm, filling in for Flora and IRra, and you're listening to Science Friday When Blue Origin's newew Glen spacecraft exploded in an enormous fireball during a ground test a couple of weeks ago, it sent shockwaves not just through the air, but through NASA's timeline for the upcoming Artemis missions. While there's never a good time for an explosion like that, it comes at an especially bad time for the Jeff Bezos Rocket Company, which was awarded a slew of NASA contracts just days before the incident to deliver rovers and drones to the moon. It had also been expected to play a major role in the upcoming Artemis II and four missions, but that's now up in the air depending on how soon Blue Origin can rebuild its only launch pad And with NASA's Artemis I crew announcement this week, we have a lot to talk about. So let's get to it with Ken Chang, a science reporter for the New York Times, where he covers NASA and the solar system And Brendan Burns, sppace repeporter for Central Florida Public Media. Can Brendon, welcome to Science Friday Thanks, Jane. Thanks Brendon, how big a deal was the explosion in terms of NASA's schedule? and what was it exactly that Blue Origin was supposed to deliver Sure, yeah, so this was a blow to the schedule, as you mentioned. was It was a huge, huge event here in Florida, miles away from the launch pad. We could see it, we could feel it. you could hear it. And really this was supposed to be a critical flight of New Glen, which NASA iss going to be relying on Blue Origin to use to get a lot of these landers and all of this equipment that it wants to get to the moon for its moon base. So as you mentioned at the start, yeah, this is very bad timing, which certainly could have some impact on the schedule. It's not just the rocket that they lost, it's the launch pad itself. It's the only launch pad that Blue Origin has for New Glen And launch pads are almost as complex as the rockets themselves. Now Blue Origin came out and said that damage wasn't as bad as they thought and they were going to be able to get back to flying by the end of this year. NASA seems confident that that will happen and they will get to the bottom of it. But you have to be a little bit skeptical when when you saw that big boom in some of the pictures that you see coming back from the pad Can NASA called Artemis II one of its most complex missions? is the mission So when Jared Eiseneig sort of revamped the mooon, Program He added this mission, which was not going to go to the moon. going stay Earth orbit. Space will will have its Starship rocket and Blue Orgin will have its bllue Moon laner Sen were lage first, then NasA astronaut in Orions capsule. and they're going to Rendezvous inth Ob practice docking and They're going to actually go into the lander and basically show that they can do these things of s directly the first time when they're at the moon and then Once after they're done with Lgin, then Starship is going to launch and they're going to do a docking with Starship as well So this is complex Because you have three different spacecraft And three different mission controls. There have be NASas. BaceX and Blue origin, which It hasn't happened before, really? It sounds like it's almost like a docking competition. Well, it alost is a bigake off, right? NASA is trying to decide Which lander would be ready for Artemis IV, the first moon landing and At this point, it looks more likely it will be SpaceX given all the troubles that Branding has described that Blue Origin is now facing in recovering from the explosion But SpaceX has had explosions too. I mean, nobody's apparently immune to explosions. No, and this has sort of been overlooked. I mean, SpaceX is actually grounded right now with Starship The had of mostly successful launch Booster crashed when I was trying to come back and the FA is requiring SpaceX two investigate and come up with a report so that they understand well enough to make sure that that doesn't come down peopleople So I mean, in that case, it sounds like nobody's ready. Wh Why doesn't NASA delay things was almost facing an artificial deadline which is the end of twenty twenty eight. and that's They want to get this off the ground while President Trump is still President Trump And then you start working backwards And if you have any hope of doing a moon landing in twenty twenty eight You have to do Artemist V in twenty twenty seven. I see. Well, so assuming that they're moving forward and pushing this pace, Brendan NASA announced the Artemis II crew Wh's in the crew that is going to go if this goes?. So the crew is three space flight veterans and one rookie. So it is being commanded by NASA's Randy Bznk. He's flown to space Twice his pilot is coming from the European Space Agency from Italy, Luca Parmitano. He had a very scary moment during a space walk in his last time at the International Space Station. His helmet filled up with water and he ran the risk of potentially drowning in space, which is absolutely terrifying, but was able to get back into the hatch and fix all that Frank Rubio is from NASA's the mission specialist. He also ran into an issue last time he was in space. He flew up on a Russian soyz capsule that sprung a leak. so they had to send up a new craft to bring him home, which left him in space for three hundred seventy one days, setting the American space flight record. And then Andrey Douglas is the Rokie flying as the other mission specialist But he was the backup crew to Artemis too. So he's very, very familiar with this program You know, you both operate in space circles, so you hear a lot of chatter about things like this. I don't. And the one thing that I keep hearing from people who have any awareness of the Artemis II crew announcement is, where are the women? There's been so much excitement about women in space. know kind of pointedly, no women on this crew can You know, was there a reason for that? Is there something that can be read into that or no? So Jared Axman said don't there's nothing to read into it. It just that's the way it happened to turn out in this case. It was very noticeable. I went back quickly to see When's the last time this happened There were four men on the SpaceX Cw six mission to the space station. for all the other crew missions In recent years, there's been at least one war in NASA was really vocal about sending, you know, the first woman and first person of color to the moon. and that sense has been scrubbed from all of the NASA websites presumably with the Trump administration's crackdown on on DEI, someome of the people that I've talked to, they're just hoping that they're saving all the women for the next flight, which will take humans to the moon and have a woman on that ground team that gets there. Well, let's move ahead to Artemis I. What can we expect to happen, Brendon Boy, we don't know. think We have to find out what happens with Artemis II first, right?ight Artemis I is going to take humans to the surface of the moon. It first time since the final Apollo mission in nineteen seventy two. But we don't know which lander is going to take them there, right? So really Artemis I is reliant on the success and what NASA learns from Artemistry You know, one of the things, one of the reasons that we haven't talked as much about for pushing this pace is not only the Trump administration, but know definitely trying to beat other people who are trying to do some of this stuff before the United States. So Ken can you just explain really basically why the US feels so much urgency to land on the moon before the Chinese do Part of is just national pride. I mean, this is something that It was the greatest accomplishment in technology of the sixties, right? There's a huge space race and the United States won and The U.S has been working on this return to the mooon program for moreore than two deces. And it just sort of putters along And now that there's someone else catching up. All of a sudden, there's this urgcy that we had to be there before the Chinese But then there's sort of this fuzzier notion that guests their first guest to dictate the rules of how do business on the moon or who sets the standards of the radio communications or how do you navigate and so on? and There's a lot of people in Congress who say we don't want China to be that the people who do that And then there's a third notion that there's money to be made there And If there's money to be made, the US should be the ones being there first. Both countries want to build moon bases at the South Pole, right Yes And what would that actually look like We wish we knew China's been talking about this collaboration with Russia It's an international moon base We've seen maybe a couple of paintings of it It's hard to tell what they have planned Um the U. S until a couple months ago really hadn't talked about anything about how they were going to build a moon base Now they have pretty pictures as well. But even Jared Isisigman says Initially it's going to look more like a junkyard rather than this nice settlement because it's going to be these rovers, these little other landers And then further down, then once they've learned some things, then they'll start coming with a more coherent design In that early junkyard that NASA wants to make, as Ken so eloquently put, it was reliant on a specific lunar lander from a commercial space company called Blue Origin, which is grounded at the moment as well. So that certainly delaysays the start of that moon base Ken you've been covering the Artemis missions for a long time. These missions have been discussed and planned for years and years. There was a success of Artemis II. We've just had the crew announcement for Artemis three. Does this moment feel different in some way than what we've seen in years previously Dn in Azid beat back in two thousand nine. And that was when President Obama had just entered the White House And his first year, we had appointed a commission to review the Cstellation program, which was the last time that NASA tried to return to Mon And that was basically a long extended