The Bottom Line: A Massive Vehicle Takes Shape

The sheer size of the Artemis II core stage is astounding. The design and manufacturing talent that it takes to build a vehicle this size is truly remarkable. Engineers from around the world should take note of the complexity and precision required to construct such a massive rocket. As the final assembly area comes into view, the anticipation is palpable.

The Vehicle Takes Shape

Two massive sections are being joined together, forming the core stage of Artemis II. The design process has been meticulous, with every detail meticulously planned and executed. The engine section will be added at the very end, featuring four RS-25 engines. Once complete, the entire core stage will be transported to a barge and shipped around the Florida panhandle to the Kennedy Space Center.

A Journey Worth Taking

The Core Stage's Journey Begins

The core stage for Artemis One has already made its journey from Michoud to the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, where it underwent engine testing. From there, it traveled on a six-day barge trip up to Florida, a feat that is truly impressive. The current author is currently 16 floors up in the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, watching the Artemis rocket take shape.

The Weight of Ambition

A Decade of Delayed Launches

Artemis has been in the works for more than a decade, originally slated to launch in 2016. However, due to delays and setbacks, the program has faced numerous challenges. NASA hopes to finally launch Artemis One this year, but with the Inspector General putting the date at 2026 at the earliest, it's clear that patience is still required.

The Cost of Ambition

A $93 Billion Price Tag

The Artemis program is expected to cost NASA $93 billion by 2025. Each Artemis flight will cost $4.1 billion, a staggering amount for a single mission. However, as the Inspector General notes, each SLs rocket will only fly once, making it a singular investment with limited reuse potential.

The Trade-Off

Reusable Rockets: A Double-Edged Sword

Compared to SpaceX's reusable rockets, which can launch and land multiple times, NASA's approach is more expensive. However, when you have a massive payload to deliver to the moon, the weight penalties associated with reusability take away from the overall mass capacity. In return, NASA hopes to commercialize Artemis and sell it to anyone needing heavy launch capability.

A Vision for the Future

Deep Space Exploration: The Next Frontier

Artemis is not just a mission to the moon; it's a stepping stone for deeper space exploration. The ultimate goal is to send astronauts to Mars and beyond, establishing a human presence in space. This dream requires a solid foundation of technology and infrastructure, which Artemis will provide.

A National Treasure

Artemis: A New Era of Space Exploration

Building something as ambitious as Artemis is not unlike building a national treasure. The amount of pride that NASA feels about this mission is palpable. When the rocket launches, it will be an indescribable moment, one that will leave people in awe. As the astronauts prepare for their journey, they too will feel a sense of excitement and trepidation.

The Emotional Connection

A Moment of History

Launch Day at Kennedy Space Center

When Artemis One launches from the Kennedy Space Center, it will be a moment like no other. The emotions and feelings experienced by those on board will be nothing short of incredible. For years to come, people will look back on this moment and remember where they were when it happened.

The Beginning of Something New

Artemis: A New Generation's Dream

As the Artemis program comes to fruition, a new generation of space explorers will take hold. They will carry the hopes and dreams of the past into the unknown, forging a new era of discovery that will leave us all in awe. The author couldn't be more proud to have witnessed this moment, knowing that they were there when it happened.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enit's so impressive to be here and i really cannot give you a sense of just how massive this thing is you see pictures you see scale drawing but until you see it assembled and it's sitting on the factory floor it's like wow that's a big rocket the average person has no idea how awesome this place is the things we do here are remarkable this is artemis nasa's new mega rocket that will take humans back to the moon for the first time in 50 years and take us further into space than we've ever been for this journey nasa needs its most powerful and advanced spacecraft ever a super heavy lift rocket known as the space launch system and an advanced crew vehicle called orion together they'll lift huge payloads and take humans on long-term missions into deep space this spacecraft will travel 1 000 times farther than the international space station on its very first flight it's the foundation for building a base on the moon and one day it's set to launch to mars it's an epic build on a massive scale and it's being built here at america's rocket factory a short drive from the center of new orleans on the edge of the gulf coast is the michoud assembly facility since 1961 this building has been a cornerstone of nasa manufacturing and it's the heart of the artemis build for the past 60 years nasa has been building the future of space exploration first to the moon with the apollo program and then with 135 shuttle missions you can see those shuttle mission patches behind me now they're doing it all again with the artemis program going back to the moon and further into deep space than ever before everything we've built for nasa has been a crude vehicle starting with the saturn program obviously put men on the moon the shuttle program we built external tanks here which obviously put humans in orbit and the shuttle program built the international space station and then today artemis will put humans back on the moon and onto mars right now nasa is focused on the first three artemis flights artemis 1 is set to launch in 2022 this first flight will orbit around the moon without astronauts it's a sort of test flight designed to collect data on the capabilities of the space launch system the orion spacecraft and all the exploration ground systems that support flight on artemis 2 nasa will send crew up for the first time for a flyby of the far side of the moon it's the first time humans will have been that far into space since the apollo program ended that flight is set to launch no earlier than 2024 by artemis iii a third rocket will take humanity back for a moon landing no sooner than 2025 sending the first woman and the first person of color to touch down on the moon's south pole and press their footprints into the lunar surface at michoud nasa contractor boeing is making the core stage of the space launch system or sls it's also where lockheed martin is building the orion pressure vessel the main structure that holds the pressurized atmosphere for the astronauts to survive in space a build of this scale takes up a lot of room getting around this building it's quicker to ride a bike than to actually walk and what you need is large open spaces i mean the rocket the core stage is 212 feet long so you got to have wide open aisles you got to have spaces with cranes to be able to hit lift the heavy rocket the floor loading which people don't realize in south louisiana there's no bedrock so the floor in here has a reinforced to support the weight of the rocket so what we're looking at right here is a scale model of the michoud assembly facility it might not look very big but this is equivalent to two million square feet of factory space that's 31 football fields all dedicated to building rockets it's kind of impressive to see it from this level feel kind of powerful to understand the artemis build it's worth doing a little bit of rocket 101 the bulk of artemis is made up of the massive sls core stage that contains the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen tanks they power the four rs-25 engines on the bottom of the rocket on either side of the core stage are the solid rocket boosters these are actually heritage parts from the shuttle program though they've been upgraded with new avionics and capacity they'll provide about 75 of the lift for the rocket the sls launches the rocket into space but it's jettisoned early in the flight that's when the rest of the spacecraft what you can see in white takes over that starts with the interim cryogenic propulsion stage or icps which guides the spacecraft on its path to the moon after launch above that is the orion crew vehicle which carries the crew and support systems then at the very top is the launch abort system which is there to propel the astronauts to safety if something goes wrong during the launch the whole of artemis 1 is 322 feet tall taller than the statue of liberty and while it's a touch shorter than the saturn 5 from the apollo era it can lift 1.3 million pounds more payload into space the rocket design for the first three artemis missions is known as block one and it can be configured for crew or cargo but nasa is already looking towards the future the next generation rocket will have a much more powerful exploration upper stage with four engines and four times the thrust that next-gen rocket will help nasa send crew and cargo on longer missions to the moon mars and beyond since the early 70s nasa has only sent humans to low earth orbit a couple of hundred miles above earth now it needs to protect astronauts on longer missions into deeper space for that nasa has partnered with lockheed martin to build a new kind of spacecraft orion with orion the stakes are critical when you build a spacecraft you can't make mistakes you're going to an environment that no one and nothing ever sees it's a harsh environment but that's why they're astronauts and we aren't the orion crew vehicle is made up of a number of sections at the base is the european service module built by the good folks at the european space agency this will guide orion through space and around the moon long after the sls is out of the picture it also contains enough food and water for a three-week mission above the service module is the crew module that's the pressurized capsule that lockhead is building it's a third larger than the apollo command module and its computing systems are four thousand times faster it has four crew seats a compact exercise machine and a toilet with its own door this capsule doesn't just have to keep the astronauts alive in space it's got to protect them when they come back to earth too during re-entry orion will travel at almost 25 000 miles an hour so it's going to get hot for the low earth orbit vehicles when they return they got to withstand about 3000 degrees during re-entry the orion capsule has to withstand about 5000 degrees and so the heat shield and the thermal protection systems on the aft end of the vehicle are significantly different while the orion build doesn't take up too much space at michoud the sls is a different story think of a regular car production line but way bigger because in this case we are building rockets and yes they're actually building them right now that's all the banging and crashing you can hear so we take individual panels they get welded together into larger sections and then those sections form up the parts of the rocket all that assembly takes place along these stations and then the final assembly is way down the other end of the building the sls is made up of the massive liquid hydrogen tank at the bottom and the liquid oxygen tank on top these tanks need to withstand huge pressures the launch of this rocket is essentially a controlled explosion after all but they also need to be as light as possible so if you imagine a coke can expanded to the size of a liquid hydrogen tank your bare wall thickness is pretty close to the same ratio and the engineering that's been there to be able to withstand the pressure and the um hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel in there is pretty amazing all right so right now i am seven stories up in the air and behind me is the vertical assembly center now this is where all those components we saw before those rings those cylindrical barrels they all get fed into this tool and get welded together to become the massive fuel tanks they get fed into the bottom they inch up kind of like an upside down pez dispenser what comes out is a fuel tank that becomes the body of the sls after the rocket has wound its way through the mishudd production line it ends up here the final assembly area and this is where we find the core stage of artemis ii about to finally come together the sheer size of the vehicle that we're building here is astounding the design and the manufacturing talent that it takes to build a vehicle this size for all the engineering folks out there in the world should shock and awe so where to from here well these two massive sections are going to get joined together then they add the engine section at the very end with four rs-25 engines then this whole core stage gets put on a barge shipped around the florida panhandle to the kennedy space center the core stage for artemis one has already made that journey after leaving michoud it went for engine testing at the stennis space center across the border in mississippi from there it traveled on a six day barge trip up to florida thankfully i could just jump on a plane so right now i am 16 floors up in the vehicle assembly building at nasa's kennedy space center and i am here to see the artemis rocket that will be going to the moon it's so impressive to be here and i really cannot give you a sense of just how massive this thing is it's so impressive the vehicle assembly building was originally built for the saturn v rocket in the apollo days now it's where artemis 1 is going through its final checks before launch but we've still got to get to launch day and like any true space program there have been plenty of delays artemis has been in the works for more than a decade it was originally slated to launch in 2016. now nasa hopes to launch artemis one this year after finally wrapping up pre-flight testing as for boots on the moon 2025 might be ambitious in fact nasa's own inspector general puts that date at 2026 at the earliest and then there's the cost the inspector general says the artemis program will cost nasa 93 billion dollars by 2025 and each artemis flight will cost 4.1 billion what's more each sls rocket will only fly once and there are no prototypes being launched on shorter test flights like we've seen with spacex's starship this rocket this is it the vehicle we built here core stage one and delivered from mishu is the same vehicle that went to stennis for testing and that test vehicle was then delivered to kennedy and that's going to be the core stage that's going to be part of artemis one launch which is going to be a man-rated vehicle so you had your prototype test vehicle and launch vehicle all in one but when companies like spacex are launching and landing the same rockets to be reused why build a rocket that can only be used once according to nasa building reusable rockets comes at a cost especially when it comes to launching huge payloads to start building infrastructure in space our mission is to get as much mass to the moon as we can on a single launch when you have reusability there's there's extra weight penalties for that you got to have the gear to land it you got to have extra fuel all that takes away mass and you can put it to the moon nasa is hoping to get a return on its investment eventually the space agency wants to commercialize artemis and sell it to anybody that needs heavy launch capability that'll leave nasa to focus on bigger missions to places like mars and that's the long-term goal nasa wants artemis to get us into deep space for the long haul shuttling astronauts to the moon setting up a lunar base and going to mars and beyond that dream is being built on the back of this rocket it's a vision for a new generation artemis the sister of apollo carrying the hopes of space exploration into a new age and soon we'll all get to see that vision launch into the sky ready to forge the next era of discovery we don't build washing machines we build national treasures and so it's going to be a feeling kind of like the first shuttle launch or the first apollo launch it's just it's indescribable um the amount of pride that that we feel you know when that occurs sounds that people will hear for artemis one at the cape um as well as like i said the emotions and feelings that the astronauts are going to experience as they're going up on this on this vehicle it's going to be nothing short of awesome you're making history you don't realize it now but at one point when you get to be my age you realize man i was there when we started youit's so impressive to be here and i really cannot give you a sense of just how massive this thing is you see pictures you see scale drawing but until you see it assembled and it's sitting on the factory floor it's like wow that's a big rocket the average person has no idea how awesome this place is the things we do here are remarkable this is artemis nasa's new mega rocket that will take humans back to the moon for the first time in 50 years and take us further into space than we've ever been for this journey nasa needs its most powerful and advanced spacecraft ever a super heavy lift rocket known as the space launch system and an advanced crew vehicle called orion together they'll lift huge payloads and take humans on long-term missions into deep space this spacecraft will travel 1 000 times farther than the international space station on its very first flight it's the foundation for building a base on the moon and one day it's set to launch to mars it's an epic build on a massive scale and it's being built here at america's rocket factory a short drive from the center of new orleans on the edge of the gulf coast is the michoud assembly facility since 1961 this building has been a cornerstone of nasa manufacturing and it's the heart of the artemis build for the past 60 years nasa has been building the future of space exploration first to the moon with the apollo program and then with 135 shuttle missions you can see those shuttle mission patches behind me now they're doing it all again with the artemis program going back to the moon and further into deep space than ever before everything we've built for nasa has been a crude vehicle starting with the saturn program obviously put men on the moon the shuttle program we built external tanks here which obviously put humans in orbit and the shuttle program built the international space station and then today artemis will put humans back on the moon and onto mars right now nasa is focused on the first three artemis flights artemis 1 is set to launch in 2022 this first flight will orbit around the moon without astronauts it's a sort of test flight designed to collect data on the capabilities of the space launch system the orion spacecraft and all the exploration ground systems that support flight on artemis 2 nasa will send crew up for the first time for a flyby of the far side of the moon it's the first time humans will have been that far into space since the apollo program ended that flight is set to launch no earlier than 2024 by artemis iii a third rocket will take humanity back for a moon landing no sooner than 2025 sending the first woman and the first person of color to touch down on the moon's south pole and press their footprints into the lunar surface at michoud nasa contractor boeing is making the core stage of the space launch system or sls it's also where lockheed martin is building the orion pressure vessel the main structure that holds the pressurized atmosphere for the astronauts to survive in space a build of this scale takes up a lot of room getting around this building it's quicker to ride a bike than to actually walk and what you need is large open spaces i mean the rocket the core stage is 212 feet long so you got to have wide open aisles you got to have spaces with cranes to be able to hit lift the heavy rocket the floor loading which people don't realize in south louisiana there's no bedrock so the floor in here has a reinforced to support the weight of the rocket so what we're looking at right here is a scale model of the michoud assembly facility it might not look very big but this is equivalent to two million square feet of factory space that's 31 football fields all dedicated to building rockets it's kind of impressive to see it from this level feel kind of powerful to understand the artemis build it's worth doing a little bit of rocket 101 the bulk of artemis is made up of the massive sls core stage that contains the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen tanks they power the four rs-25 engines on the bottom of the rocket on either side of the core stage are the solid rocket boosters these are actually heritage parts from the shuttle program though they've been upgraded with new avionics and capacity they'll provide about 75 of the lift for the rocket the sls launches the rocket into space but it's jettisoned early in the flight that's when the rest of the spacecraft what you can see in white takes over that starts with the interim cryogenic propulsion stage or icps which guides the spacecraft on its path to the moon after launch above that is the orion crew vehicle which carries the crew and support systems then at the very top is the launch abort system which is there to propel the astronauts to safety if something goes wrong during the launch the whole of artemis 1 is 322 feet tall taller than the statue of liberty and while it's a touch shorter than the saturn 5 from the apollo era it can lift 1.3 million pounds more payload into space the rocket design for the first three artemis missions is known as block one and it can be configured for crew or cargo but nasa is already looking towards the future the next generation rocket will have a much more powerful exploration upper stage with four engines and four times the thrust that next-gen rocket will help nasa send crew and cargo on longer missions to the moon mars and beyond since the early 70s nasa has only sent humans to low earth orbit a couple of hundred miles above earth now it needs to protect astronauts on longer missions into deeper space for that nasa has partnered with lockheed martin to build a new kind of spacecraft orion with orion the stakes are critical when you build a spacecraft you can't make mistakes you're going to an environment that no one and nothing ever sees it's a harsh environment but that's why they're astronauts and we aren't the orion crew vehicle is made up of a number of sections at the base is the european service module built by the good folks at the european space agency this will guide orion through space and around the moon long after the sls is out of the picture it also contains enough food and water for a three-week mission above the service module is the crew module that's the pressurized capsule that lockhead is building it's a third larger than the apollo command module and its computing systems are four thousand times faster it has four crew seats a compact exercise machine and a toilet with its own door this capsule doesn't just have to keep the astronauts alive in space it's got to protect them when they come back to earth too during re-entry orion will travel at almost 25 000 miles an hour so it's going to get hot for the low earth orbit vehicles when they return they got to withstand about 3000 degrees during re-entry the orion capsule has to withstand about 5000 degrees and so the heat shield and the thermal protection systems on the aft end of the vehicle are significantly different while the orion build doesn't take up too much space at michoud the sls is a different story think of a regular car production line but way bigger because in this case we are building rockets and yes they're actually building them right now that's all the banging and crashing you can hear so we take individual panels they get welded together into larger sections and then those sections form up the parts of the rocket all that assembly takes place along these stations and then the final assembly is way down the other end of the building the sls is made up of the massive liquid hydrogen tank at the bottom and the liquid oxygen tank on top these tanks need to withstand huge pressures the launch of this rocket is essentially a controlled explosion after all but they also need to be as light as possible so if you imagine a coke can expanded to the size of a liquid hydrogen tank your bare wall thickness is pretty close to the same ratio and the engineering that's been there to be able to withstand the pressure and the um hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel in there is pretty amazing all right so right now i am seven stories up in the air and behind me is the vertical assembly center now this is where all those components we saw before those rings those cylindrical barrels they all get fed into this tool and get welded together to become the massive fuel tanks they get fed into the bottom they inch up kind of like an upside down pez dispenser what comes out is a fuel tank that becomes the body of the sls after the rocket has wound its way through the mishudd production line it ends up here the final assembly area and this is where we find the core stage of artemis ii about to finally come together the sheer size of the vehicle that we're building here is astounding the design and the manufacturing talent that it takes to build a vehicle this size for all the engineering folks out there in the world should shock and awe so where to from here well these two massive sections are going to get joined together then they add the engine section at the very end with four rs-25 engines then this whole core stage gets put on a barge shipped around the florida panhandle to the kennedy space center the core stage for artemis one has already made that journey after leaving michoud it went for engine testing at the stennis space center across the border in mississippi from there it traveled on a six day barge trip up to florida thankfully i could just jump on a plane so right now i am 16 floors up in the vehicle assembly building at nasa's kennedy space center and i am here to see the artemis rocket that will be going to the moon it's so impressive to be here and i really cannot give you a sense of just how massive this thing is it's so impressive the vehicle assembly building was originally built for the saturn v rocket in the apollo days now it's where artemis 1 is going through its final checks before launch but we've still got to get to launch day and like any true space program there have been plenty of delays artemis has been in the works for more than a decade it was originally slated to launch in 2016. now nasa hopes to launch artemis one this year after finally wrapping up pre-flight testing as for boots on the moon 2025 might be ambitious in fact nasa's own inspector general puts that date at 2026 at the earliest and then there's the cost the inspector general says the artemis program will cost nasa 93 billion dollars by 2025 and each artemis flight will cost 4.1 billion what's more each sls rocket will only fly once and there are no prototypes being launched on shorter test flights like we've seen with spacex's starship this rocket this is it the vehicle we built here core stage one and delivered from mishu is the same vehicle that went to stennis for testing and that test vehicle was then delivered to kennedy and that's going to be the core stage that's going to be part of artemis one launch which is going to be a man-rated vehicle so you had your prototype test vehicle and launch vehicle all in one but when companies like spacex are launching and landing the same rockets to be reused why build a rocket that can only be used once according to nasa building reusable rockets comes at a cost especially when it comes to launching huge payloads to start building infrastructure in space our mission is to get as much mass to the moon as we can on a single launch when you have reusability there's there's extra weight penalties for that you got to have the gear to land it you got to have extra fuel all that takes away mass and you can put it to the moon nasa is hoping to get a return on its investment eventually the space agency wants to commercialize artemis and sell it to anybody that needs heavy launch capability that'll leave nasa to focus on bigger missions to places like mars and that's the long-term goal nasa wants artemis to get us into deep space for the long haul shuttling astronauts to the moon setting up a lunar base and going to mars and beyond that dream is being built on the back of this rocket it's a vision for a new generation artemis the sister of apollo carrying the hopes of space exploration into a new age and soon we'll all get to see that vision launch into the sky ready to forge the next era of discovery we don't build washing machines we build national treasures and so it's going to be a feeling kind of like the first shuttle launch or the first apollo launch it's just it's indescribable um the amount of pride that that we feel you know when that occurs sounds that people will hear for artemis one at the cape um as well as like i said the emotions and feelings that the astronauts are going to experience as they're going up on this on this vehicle it's going to be nothing short of awesome you're making history you don't realize it now but at one point when you get to be my age you realize man i was there when we started you\n"