“The public still has great affection for NASA. There is not a better brand, certainly in government,” said Lori Garver, former deputy NASA administrator. She cited the awe and excitement over the first images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.
“But the human spaceflight program is a little different,” she admitted. “SLS, human spaceflight, new astronaut class? Twitter likes are in the single-digit thousands. I don’t think in any world will Monday’s launch be on the order of the space telescope, yet we spent multiples of the amount.”
The James Webb telescope cost roughly $10 billion; the bill for the Artemis program is expected to be $90 billion by 2025, according to the NASA Inspector General.
The uncrewed mission will be the first and only rigorous test of the rocket and the space capsule before it takes astronauts around the moon in 2024 and then helps deliver them to the surface in 2025 to begin building a research station.
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