NASA is building a multi-billion dollar space station to orbit the moon, in the hopes that it’ll be a launching pad to reach Mars. One problem? Many space advocates don’t see the point of its mission.
In about three years, if all goes as planned, the American government will launch a cylinder-shaped module 250,000 miles into space and insert it into orbit around the moon. Next will come another capsule, then another, all to be joined into a human habitat orbiting as close as 1,000 miles to the lunar surface. On one end will be two massive wings with solar panels; on the other, a docked spacecraft that will shuttle humans back and forth between the moon and Earth.
The idea for Gateway was announced early in the Trump administration as a kind of permanent foothold in deep space, a launch pad for wherever we might want to go next, be it the moon, Mars or elsewhere. The big expense in space travel is the massive rockets needed to escape Earth’s gravity, so a permanent space station outside of low Earth orbit could allow astronauts and robots to refuel and resupply without always making the expensive return trip to Earth.
Skeptics, including Zubrin, paint Gateway as a scheme mainly designed to repurpose projects begun by aerospace contractors for other missions but canceled – specifically, Boeing’s massive rocket known as the Space Launch System, and a human spacecraft designed by Lockheed Martin known as Orion. Gateway is a “boondoggle that will cost several tens of billions of dollars at the least and serve no useful purpose,” he said.
President Donald Trump speaking in December 2017 before signing “Space Policy Directive #1" which directed NASA to send American astronauts back to the moon’s surface and eventually on to Mars. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images An orbiting station would also enable the U.S. to explore more of the moon than the sites of the six landings during Apollo, which could lead to some new discoveries. “From 1969 to 2008, most people believed the moon was bone dry. ...
Under President George W. Bush’s plan to send people to the moon, his administration started to work on a rocket, capsule and lander. When President Barack Obama took office, he tried to cancel the entire lunar program, but companies protested, saying they were already making progress on two programs developed for that: a rocket, which became the SLS, and a capsule to transport humans, which became Orion.
Another benefit of the Gateway is that it will facilitate partnerships with both international and commercial companies. The habitat will be built with an open source architecture, so anyone can go online and get the information they need to make their own platform compatible with the Gateway. That would allow companies ranging from aerospace giants to small startups to use the Gateway as a stopping-off point on trips to both the lunar surface and deep space destinations like Mars.
In NASA’s view, the fact that Gateway has many missions isn’t a drawback but a strength. O’Keefe, who is currently a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says “it’s not a goal and ambition in and of itself. It’s another means to an end.”has long been ambivalent about returning to the moon.
NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine tours a mockup of the Lunar Gateway’s habitation module at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in March, accompanied by Lockheed Martin executive Bill Pratt. | Aubrey Gemignani/NASA via Getty Images Despite Trump’s openly nationalistic aims for NASA, the Gateway was explicitly designed to be an international project. But Canada is so far the only international space agency to sign on to the project, and it’s unclear if other space allies will join.
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