Towards a cancellation of Artemis to send humans directly to Mars using the Starship?

Artemis was desired by Donald J. Trump, then the 45th President of the United States of America. As a manned space program, it aims to bring humans back to the Moon and must constitute a step before reaching Mars, the ultimate objective symbolized by the red trajectory on the Artemis logo.

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Going to our natural satellite nevertheless requires a super-heavy launcher, as was the legendary Saturn V in its time, still today the most powerful rocket to have transported a crew. Of course, SpaceX's Super Heavy and Starship surpass it, but they are still in the prototype stage.

From 2011, NASA developed a new superheavy launcher, the SLS (Space Launch System), a central element in the Artemis program. Its first launch in 2022 was subject to numerous postponements, in particular because of leaks on its boosters. Everything ultimately went well, but some people didn't appreciate the cost of the program. Indeed, the manufacture of a unit of this launcher, in its lightest version called Block I, amounts to 2.2 billion dollars, the cost of a launch being up to 4 billion. A bit expensive, yes…

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Remember that the Artemis II team has already been selected and has been training for a while for a repeat of the Apollo 8 mission, that is to say the journey from the Earth to the Moon, but without landing on its surface.

Will Donald Trump and Elon Musk reshuffle the cards?

Last October, SpaceX with its Super Heavy + Starship launcher carried out a never-before-seen maneuver (catching up with the Mechazilla tower) and amazed the whole world. Elon Musk's private aerospace company has all the makings of a very big future in space conquest. Of course, the Starship is still far from being able to transport a crew, but that is indeed its reason for existence.

Then, in November, the election of Donald Trump and the latter's appointment of Elon Musk to head a department responsible for evaluating the expenditures of federal agencies turned attention towards NASA. The sulphurous tycoon, also the head of Tesla, announces that he wants to save the American taxpayer 3,000 billion dollars. The rumors begin, first about the expensive SLS…

It would indeed be an earthquake. The SLS was designed, among others, by a struggling Boeing and mobilizes the work of many people on US territory. It is therefore not certain that elected officials on the ground will be very happy with this prospect. That said, the (future?) Artemis III mission must call on the Starship and the SLS jointly in this phase of the program intended to set foot on the Moon. Using only a single launcher seems – on paper at least – to respond to a certain logic in terms of efficiency and costs.

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Hello planet Mars, goodbye Moon

Donald Trump repeated during his electoral campaign that he hopes that Man will walk on Mars before the end of his second term. Does he just want to please his friend Elon Musk, or is there a strategy hidden behind his words?

Here is what Georg Nield, a former senior official at the FAA, the body responsible for issuing flight authorizations across the Atlantic, recently said: “There's a good chance we'll take another look at the Artemis program, whether that means speeding it up or even skipping the Moon to focus on Mars..

It would no longer be an earthquake, but a big bang! Above all, such a change of direction would have profound political and geopolitical implications. Abandoning Artemis as is would mean abandoning the Gateway space station, which was to be put into orbit around the Moon within the next three years. It would also mean that the United States is abandoning the return to the Moon to the Chinese. However, we know that there are precious resources on our satellite, for example helium-3, very expensive and useful for nuclear fusion, as well as water, a sought-after commodity in space. It is for this last reason that the lunar South Pole is targeted by the Artemis program. For some, we should also question the Orion capsule, developed by ESA and Airbus, which must transport the astronauts.

Is Trump ready to let the Chinese flag be planted on the Moon to become the president who will have financed the most incredible space program of all time with the first steps of Man on Mars? It is wise to remember that if a trip to the Moon is within technological reach, that to the Red Planet is not yet. To achieve this within four years would require expenditures comparable to those of a major war effort. Elon Musk would not be an obstacle, quite the contrary: he was born for this, he only thinks about that. But would Donald Trump's America agree to pay the human and financial cost?

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