Rob LarterI'm as fascinated by the Artemis II mission as many other people, but as scientist I'm frustrated that experts interviewed about it in the media are rarely asked to justify the truly astronomical cost. So far the program is reported to have cost $93Bn, with the direct costs of this mission alone amounting to more than $4Bn. I'm perhaps particularly sensitive to this because I'm frequently asked to justify funding three orders of magnitude smaller that we have used to improve knowledge of how the Antarctic ice sheet will respond to climate change and contribute to future sea-level rise.
Jean-François Mezei@PoLaRobs Pork. When the Shuttle was killed , certain key industries knocked on politicians doors for sustinence. Politicians dictated the new rocket had to have solid rocket boosters. Dictated use of shuttle engines with tank made at Michoud. ATK (now part of larger company) made not only shuttle SRBs but also intercontinental missiles which is cyclical business, and SRBs keeps it alive between large ICBM purchases.
@jfmezei Those may be the primary reasons, I honestly don't know, but even assuming that is true it doesn't excuse journalists for not asking the tough questions.
@PoLaRobs For journalists, the replacement of Shuttle with Ares/Constellation/SLS/Artemis has always been so obviously pork that it was not worth asking. But they are quick to point out the costs of the project to nowehere because their spin is to show NASA can't do anything anymore. Ability to launch Artemis II was a HUGE step for NASA to disprove that narrative. SpaceX has yet to reach orbit with its monster, and nowhere near able to land on moon as promised as part of contract with NASA.
@jfmezei Even if something is obvious to those in the know this doesn't excuse journalists for not asking people to articulate the justification for the vast investment of public money. Humans going into space is one of the activities that many of them get so excited about that they forget the basic principles of their role.