Name: NASA’s $30 Billion Moon Return Mission, Explained | Beyond Earth
Uploaded: 2020-10-24T18:28:08.000Z
Duration: 8 min 25 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt

Narrator: It was the last time any human stepped foot

But NASA is hoping that's about to change.

This is the new era of space exploration.

And it's even more ambitious than before.

Dave Mosher: Artemis is NASA's big plan to go

Narrator: The mission was named in homage

the Greek goddess of the hunt and the moon.

Where Apollo astronauts only spent hours or days

and investigate the far side of the moon,

This will give scientists a much better understanding

And that's the pressing reason for this mission.

Mosher: But it's also a dry run for going to Mars,

The journey, instead of being three days to the moon,

So you need to practice these deep-space operations,

and you also need to practice surface operations.

NASA said it will need $20 billion to $30 billion

That's up to $6 billion annually over the next five years,

and that's on top of its current $20-billion-plus

Though, for comparison, $30 billion is only

about 4% of the US's annual military budget.

Or about three of the Navy's newest nuclear submarines.

Now, a lot of Artemis' budget will go towards

Mosher: Space Launch System is this gargantuan rocket

and a bunch of the equipment they need to go up there, too.

But things with the SLS haven't exactly gone to plan.

Mosher: The first rocket was supposed to launch in 2017,

and it's now 2019 and they're not looking

one of these every year or two going forward.

Narrator: To top it off, SLS isn't reusable,

That's an estimated $1.5 billion to $3 billion

Mosher: The advantages of SLS is that it's just bigger,

Narrator: Estimates show the Falcon Heavy could

launch a payload of about 21,000 kilograms to the moon,

whereas NASA says the SLS will lift more than twice that.

So, yeah, size definitely matters, but it's also about...

Mosher: Politics, jobs, and other missions.

these people in Congress who pull the purse strings

have a lot of districts where NASA centers are located.

there are tens of thousands of people employed to build

and maintain and do all the things you need to do

And the third part is that NASA is legally bound

and look for signs of life around one of its icy moons.

Narrator: Now, contrary to old sci-fi films,

There's a series of steps that happen first,

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NASA’s $30 Billion Moon Return Mission, Explained | Beyond Earth

permanent

practice

current

suppose