During a hearing of the House space subcommittee on Wednesday, the outlines of a battle over the future of NASA's Artemis Moon program emerged. Yet it was not a partisan fight over whether the Republican White House plan to land humans on the Moon by 2024 should or shouldn't happen. Instead, some members of both political parties questioned how the space agency planned to conduct the Artemis program.

These members, including Oklahoma Democratic representative and committee chair Kendra Horn, as well as Alabama Republican representative Mo Brooks, were particularly skeptical of private rockets in their comments and questions during the hearing. They also pressed NASA on why the agency is not moving more quickly with development of a powerful second stage upgrade for the agency's Space Launch System rocket. This "Exploration Upper Stage" would increase the amount of mass the rocket could send to the Moon from 26 tons to 37 tons.

Wednesday's hearing was notable because it appears to mark an escalation in an intense lobbying battle going on behind the scenes by some contractors—most likely led by Boeing—to kill NASA's proposed Lunar Gateway and instead accelerate funding for the Exploration Upper Stage.

A mixed fleet

In its efforts to land humans on the Moon by 2024, NASA has opted for a "mixed fleet" approach toward building up systems in lunar orbit over the next five years.

Under these plans, human crews would launch on NASA's Space Launch System rocket, which would propel the Orion spacecraft and its crew toward a Lunar Gateway at the Moon. Prior to this crewed mission in late 2024, commercial rockets would launch elements of that Gateway, as well as components of the lander that would take humans from the Gateway down to the Moon's surface.

This plan, according to the space agency, balances the lower costs and capabilities of private rockets such as SpaceX's Falcon Heavy vehicle along with the heavier lift capacity of the larger SLS rocket. NASA is also concerned that enough SLS rockets cannot be built between now and 2024 to support the Artemis program, so the agency wants to buttress its manifest with reusable private rockets.

However, in recent weeks there has been pushback from the traditional aerospace industry. Publicly, it began with an op-ed in The Hill by Doug Cooke, a former NASA associate administrator who helped oversee the design and early development of the SLS rocket. In his article, Cooke argued that the fastest and surest way for NASA to land humans on the Moon is to ignore commercial launchers, bypass the Gateway, and accelerate development of the Exploration Upper Stage.

This would allow the agency to fit the entire lander onto a single SLS launch, similar to the Apollo program in the 1960s. "Rather than draw on the successful Apollo model, NASA is being directed to deviate as a result of three arbitrary constraints," Cooke wrote. One of them is a requirement to use commercial rockets. "Apparently, under pressure from commercial launch providers who need additional launches to fill their manifests, NASA is being directed to break the lunar lander into multiple pieces so these can fit on less powerful commercial launchers increasing risk and constraining the architecture," Cooke wrote.

NASA push back

During Wednesday's hearing, NASA acting chief of human exploration (and former astronaut) Ken Bowersox disagreed with this characterization, saying there was no such pressure. "Nobody is driving us," he said. "We came to these conclusions on our own. A big driver is flexibility. We want to have multiple options. We don’t want to rely on just one system. We would like to have other systems."

A NASA administration source also told Ars after the hearing, "Development of the Exploration Upper Stage was intentionally slowed down to focus on the core stage." This refers to the first stage of the large rocket, which has cost the space agency nearly $10 billion. The US Government Accountability Office has criticized both NASA's management of the core stage contract and the performance of the primary contractor, Boeing, calling both out for delays and cost increases. This initial variant of the SLS rocket, without the improved upper stage, is now unlikely to fly before at least 2021.

The Trump White House inherited these long-standing issues with SLS rocket, which Congress ordered the agency to design and build nearly a decade ago. Ongoing problems with the SLS rocket led, at least in part, to the ouster of long-time human spaceflight chief William Gerstenmaier by NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine in July. The NASA chief has since been trying to get the program back on track.

Bridenstine has decided that it is best to focus efforts on getting the core stage flying as soon as possible. Three SLS rocket flights by 2024 are probably all that Boeing can handle due to "performance issues" cited several times by Bowersox during Wednesday's hearing. This third flight would culminate in the Moon landing at the lunar south pole.

The NASA chief has also defended development of the Gateway as a critical component of a "sustainable" return to the Moon. Instead of emulating Apollo's "flags and footprints" missions from half a century ago, NASA would instead like to return to the Moon to stay and eventually send humans to Mars, using the Gateway as a staging point.

Political pressure

A former NASA official, Cooke is now a consultant who has staked out positions that support Boeing and its contracts for the SLS core stage and the Exploration Upper Stage. (Boeing has paid him $465,000 since 2017). He appears to have made political inroads with his argument for spending more money now on Exploration Upper Stage development rather than on commercial launch vehicles. "I think that the pressure to get to commercial capabilities and drive that objective is causing us to do things that are higher risk," Cooke said at Wednesday's hearing.

It was not at all surprising to see Mo Brooks, an Alabama representative who supports Boeing and the SLS rocket—developed in his state at the Marshall Space Flight Center—supporting Cooke's argument. He read from Cooke's op-ed during Wednesday's hearing.

What was surprising is that Horn and others at the hearing also appeared to be swayed by Cooke's view that bypassing commercial rockets and the Gateway would lead to a simpler and faster lunar mission. “I believe there is value in developing commercial capabilities," she said toward the end of the hearing. However, she added, "I am concerned that the decisions are not being driven by what is most efficient or effective and what is most cost efficient.”

This is an interesting viewpoint given that commercial rockets cost $100 to $200 million, at most, versus the $1 billion to $2 billion cost of a single SLS rocket—not including the hundreds of millions of dollars, at a minimum, the agency would have to invest in Exploration Upper Stage development contracts with Boeing. Moreover, one of the commercial rockets—the Falcon Heavy—already exists and has flown three successful missions. Other boosters, including Blue Origin's powerful New Glenn rocket, should be ready to fly in two or three years. An SLS rocket with the better upper stage almost certainly wouldn't be ready by 2024, and NASA knows this.

"At this point, there is no path by which the Exploration Upper Stage will be ready for Artemis 3 in 2024," the NASA administration source told Ars. "Hence, it is not in the critical path (for the Moon landing)."

Boeing power play?

Two sources familiar with this emerging battle say it appears to be a calculation by Boeing about the role it could play in the Artemis Moon landing campaign. Contracts for two major pieces of the Lunar Gateway, its power and propulsion element and small habitat module, have been awarded to Maxar Technologies and Northrop Grumman, respectively. Boeing is therefore unlikely—at least at this time—to play a major role in Gateway development.

Meanwhile, with its existing work on the SLS core stage and the upper stage, the Starliner vehicle for commercial crew, and a management contract for the International Space Station, Boeing may not be well positioned to win any of the contracts for the human landing system NASA is also seeking to build between now and 2024, these sources said. That bidding process is now underway.

It appears that Boeing has therefore decided to push hard for more funding for the Exploration Upper Stage now, which would at a minimum delay the Gateway and also deal damage to its commercial rivals in the launch business. Notably, during Wednesday's hearing, Cooke also floated another potential line of space business for the company by suggesting that one contractor should probably be responsible for integrating the entire SLS rocket.

"It's not just the core stage, it's boosters and engines," Cooke said. "NASA is currently the integrator. If you want to get to a fixed price on a launch vehicle, it would seem to me it would be better to have that combined under a prime contract, where the owner of the prime contract has control of all the processes and can bring some of these efficiencies to bear." Left unsaid was that Boeing, managing the core stage and Exploration Upper Stage, would be this "prime contractor."