A former NASA deputy administrator speaks candidly about the troubled history and radical potential of the space agency’s lunar return
Lori Garver, NASA’s former deputy administrator, is famously opposed to reinventing the wheel. NASA, she has written, wasn’t created to do something again. It’s no surprise, then, that she has become a thoughtful critic of the space agency’s approach for returning humans to the moon, which relies on rocketry similar to what NASA used to launch Apollo- and space-shuttle-era astronauts decades ago.
Scientific American caught up with Garver before the test flight and chatted about the upcoming milestone, why it matters, what’s at stake, SpaceX’s own Starship megarocket and what Garver’s most excited about in space science.Artemis I is just around the corner—and for the first time, with a seemingly solid target launch date.
I am asked that a lot. My first answer is: single digits. But I don’t know. It hasn’t flown once successfully. It’s a new rocket, although with old parts, but it’s still complicated. First rockets usually have some tweaks to work out. What’s difficult is that the launch cadence doesn’t really allow for problems, so that might limit its use. But there is a lot of political support for it.
What happens if this initial test flight fails—if there’s a problem with the SLS or if Orion doesn’t make it back safely? How expensive is the SLS, and how can it be so expensive? Can you put these numbers into the context of Apollo or the space shuttle?
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