In Defense of Gateway

NASA's lunar space station may be targeted for budget cuts. Here's why that's a bad idea.

Gateway’s Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module is now at Northrop Grumman’s integration and test facility in Gilbert, Arizona for final outfitting. Next stop — Kennedy Space Center, where it will be mated with its Power and Propulsion Element (PPE). Image source: NASA.

When President Trump’s NASA administrator nominee Jared Isaacman testifed before the Senate Commerce Committee on April 9, committee chair Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) asked the nominee, “What is your view of the Gateway project?”

Isaacman responded:

… I would love to roll up my sleeves and further understand what’s working right, what are the opportunities the Gateway presents to us, and where are some of the challenges, because I think the Gateway is a component of many programs that are over budget and behind schedule, sir.

Cruz asked if he intended to cancel Gateway. Isaacman replied that he had “no intention, as of now, to say that I would cancel any program” until after he’s in the job.

Gateway is NASA’s plan for a permanent space station in lunar orbit. The station would be built, serviced, and maintained by NASA’s Project Artemis partners.

Gateway is scheduled to launch no earlier than 2027 on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. NASA issued the launch contract to SpaceX in 2021. If you’re worried that Elon Musk might plant a bug in President Trump’s ear to dump Gateway in favor of his Starship, the Gateway launch contract is worth $331.8 million to SpaceX. Musk has criticized Project Artemis, calling it “extremely inefficient, as it is a jobs-maximizing program, not a results-maximizing program.” But, to my knowledge, he’s never singled out Gateway.

A large contingent of the space advocacy community views Gateway as a competitor with a lunar base. This is sometimes called the “Boots and Flags” paradigm. The sole purpose of NASA, in their view, is to land a heroic astronaut on a extraterrestrial surface to plant Old Glory and take a picture so we can prove we’re better than the enemy nation du jour. Gateway isn’t heroic, in their view. It’s a halfway measure. Let’s do Apollo again!

Neil deGrasse Tyson calls this “Apollo necrophilia.” Addressing the May 2008 International Space Development Conference, Tyson said, “The necrophilic part of it is that we’re worshipping something that we should not be worshipping because we should be somewhere else by now and we’re not, and that concerns me.”

But if the “necrophiliacs” think about it, Gateway fits their paradigm just fine.

An artist’s concept of the lunar module (LM) docked to the command and service module (CSM). Image source: Science Photo Gallery.

Let’s recall how Apollo worked.

A three-person crew arrived in lunar orbit safely ensconced in their command and service module (CSM). Attached atop their spacecraft was the lunar module (LM), which would be used to land people on the moon.

Two astronauts passed through a connecting tunnel into the LM, while the third astronaut remained in the capsule. The LM detached from the CSM to land on the surface. To return its crew, the LM’s ascent stage separated from its descent stage to return the astronauts to the CSM. Safely aboard, the trio returned to Earth.

The third crew member who remained in the CSM is often forgotten. That astronaut typically performed science experiments, took photographs, relayed messages, and on the later missions performed spacewalks to retrieve film magazines from a camera mounted in the service module.

That CSM was the forerunner of Gateway.

Due to the limitations of the era’s technology, the LM was used only once. Crews couldn’t return to the surface to explore elsewhere, or to resume their earlier exploration. It was one and done.

Gateway would provide the ability for crews to make repeated sorties to the surface, or even to go to different locations. Gateway is designed to alter its orbit. Apollo was not.

The CSM was limited to the fuel aboard. Gateway has its Power and Propulsion Element. The PPE will provide solar electric propulsion. Gateway will require only a tenth of conventional chemical propulsion.

A crude analogy might be the Apollo 13 mission. After the CSM suffered an explosion that incapacitated its propellant tanks, the crew used the LM engine to alter its course and slingshot around the moon to return to Earth. It was chemical propulsion, not solar electric, but it’s a rough example of what might be possible with Gateway. The station will be capable of a halo orbit, leaving the moon to venture further than Apollo crews ever went.

The Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module is Gateway’s foundation. One can foresee Gateway growing in the future, with additional modules attached by the US or its Project Artemis partners. That can only mean more landing opportunities, and more landing craft that can be refueled by propellants delivered to Gateway by commercial vendors. If something catastrophic were to happen to a lunar base, Gateway would be a safe harbor. It’s also a place where surface crew could shelter during a massive solar radiation storm.

Another reason for lunar landers to dock at Gateway is to conduct inspections. That’s a tough lesson NASA learned with the Columbia accident in January 2003. When Columbia launched, the orbiter’s left wing was damaged by insulating foam that fell off the external tank. The crew couldn’t inspect the orbiter because they were on a science mission, therefore they carried no spacesuits. They weren’t going to the International Space Station, so no one could look out a window.

Artemis has two lunar landers in the pipeline, a lunar variant of the SpaceX Starship, and the Blue Origin Blue Moon. There’s no guarantee that either will be in mint condition after launch, much less after returning from the surface. Gateway will be a service garage in lunar orbit.

All this assumes that sending crew to the surface is the only way to explore. It’s not.

NASA scientists use Microsoft HoloLens goggles to interact with OnSight software to explore Mars. Video source: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory YouTube channel.

For ten years, NASA scientists have been using Microsoft HoloLens technology as a complement to the imagery transmitted to Earth by Mars rovers. Because of the significant time delay, one-way transmissions between Earth and Mars can take anywhere from 4 to 24 minutes.

Now imagine a Gateway-style space station in orbit around Mars. An astronaut aboard could use HoloLens and OnSight to operate a rover in real-time. The time delay is eliminated.

By sending robotic craft to the surface of the moon or Mars, operated by crew in orbit, there’s no risk to the astronaut. Descent and ascent are the most dangerous part of spaceflight. Why send a person to the surface if there’s no reason to do so? If samples need to be returned, dispatch a reusable cargo craft to and from Gateway.

This isn’t new technology. NASA landed robotic craft on the moon in the 1960s. The Soviets went one better, using robots three times to return lunar soil samples to Earth in the 1970s. Private companies are now landing small robots on the moon to demonstrate their ability to deliver payloads, through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. It’s not much of a stretch to envision modifying their technologies to transport payloads to and from Gateway.

When Congress created NASA in 1958, “boots and flags” wasn’t the reason. NASA was intended to be a space version of its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. NASA was only expected to “contribute materially” to at least one of a number of itemized activities. That language hasn’t changed in the nearly 67 years of NASA’s existence. (Look it up — Section §20102(d).)

The NACA was an incubator for cutting-edge aeronautics it transferred to the private sector. The NACA didn’t operate its own airline, but it did make available what they learned to US commercial airline companies and airplane manufacturers. That made the US the pre-eminent aeronautics nation in the global economy.

That birthright was lost when President John F. Kennedy proposed the US land a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s (and return him safely to Earth). This “boots and flags” paradigm was not what NASA was intended to be. For the last sixty years, NASA has struggled to find its way, because the “boots and flags” paradigm is hideously expensive and unsustainable without a financially viable way to do it.

That’s what Gateway does. Gateway becomes the equivalent of your local municipal airport. Those planes at your airport are not government planes. They’re private companies flying private passengers and cargo, competing for business. Gateway will be a truly international spaceport, with NASA’s Project Artemis partners adding their own modules, their own crews, and perhaps one day their own spacecraft. SpaceX and Blue Origin are two companies with plans to commercially operate in cislunar space.

An artist’s concept of the completed Gateway. Image source: NASA.

Cancelling Gateway now would be a very bad idea. Any future lunar base would lose its safe harbor, and science would lose its lunar observation platform. HALO and PPE, already built, would wind up in some museum as yet another example of the road not taken — or, even worse, scrapped. HALO’s primary structure was built in Italy by Thales Alenia under a contract with Northrop Grumman. Europe, Japan, and Canada have invested money and time in building Gateway components. Cancelling Gateway would prove to our partners that, once again, the United States can’t be trusted.

I’m sure someone will point out some technical inadequacy with Gateway. That’s true of anything humans build, especially government projects. But Gateway is the first, just as the International Space Station is the first US outpost for a sustained human presence in low Earth orbit. Commercial companies right now are developing their own habitats to succeed the ISS. The same will happen, someday, with lunar orbit.

That’s less likely to happen without Gateway as the pathfinder.