Can You Hear the Bell Tolling? The January 16, 2025 Update

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Opinion

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By Dale Skran

Top image: New Glenn rocket, courtesy Blue Origin

For longer than I originally expected, I have been writing about what criteria would force even the most conservative space planner to abandon NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS)/Orion duet. There has been a lot of water under the bridge since my last update in 2023 (Ad Astra, 3rd Quarter). We have seen big events – two flights of Vulcan, the first crewed flight of Starliner, the first flight of New Glenn, the first flight of Ariane 6, and lots of Starship flights.  As I write this today – January 16, 2025 – which saw both the first flight of New Glenn and the 7th Starship flight – seems like an appropriate time for taking an objective look at things. But the structure I proposed years ago for evaluating whether ending NASA’s use of SLS was possible seems to have been a productive one that imposed some discipline on the speculation that often infuses space circles. Additionally, with the advent of the second Trump Administration, and the nomination of Jared Isaacman to be NASA Administrator, the probability of big changes in the space world seems to be higher than for decades.

Criterion One: Commercial Crew, the Glass still Half-Full

This criterion is premised on the idea that an unofficial but very real “deal” existed at NASA and in Congress that Commercial Cargo/Crew would be funded as long as the SLS/Orion budget remained untouched. This deal was not properly honored by the SLS side for the first few years of Commercial Cargo, but at some point, support in Congress for the commercial approach became much stronger. The success of Commercial Resupply Services looms so large at this point that there is no need to lay it out here – but what of Commercial Crew?

Today, there can be little doubt that the SpaceX Commercial Crew entry, the Dragon 2, has been successful. This list of Dragon 2 crewed flights speaks for itself:

    1. Demo-2, May 30 2020, 2 NASA crew
    2. Crew-1, November16, 2020, 4 NASA crew
    3. Crew-2, April 23, 2021, 4 NASA crew
    4. Inspiration4, September 16 2021, 4 non-NASA crew
    5. Crew-3, November 11, 2021, 4 NASA crew
    6. Axiom-1, April 8 2022, 4 non-NASA crew
    7. Crew-4, April 2 2022, 4 NASA crew
    8. Crew-5, October 5 2022, 4 NASA crew
    9. Crew-6, September 2023, 4 NASA crew
    10. Axiom-2, May 2023, 4 non-NASA crew
    11. Crew-7, August 26 2023, 4 NASA crew
    12. Axiom-3, January 19, 4 non-NASA crew
    13. Crew-8, March 4 2024, 4 NASA crew
    14. Polaris Dawn, September 10 2024, 4 non-NASA crew
    15. Crew-9, September 28 2024, 2 NASA crew up, 4 NASA crew down

The above totals 56 astronauts to orbit on Dragon 2. To put this into context, this is more than were launched to orbit by Mercury (4), Gemini (16), and Apollo (24) combined (44).

The Boeing Starliner has, to put it politely, come up short. After long series of failed tests and mishaps, on June 5, 2024 Starliner carried its first crew to the ISS. Unfortunately, a variety of problems were encountered, causing NASA to bring the Starliner back to the Earth without a crew, leaving astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams on the ISS, where they remain to this day, fulfilling a long-term mission as ISS crew for NASA.

The current situation where SpaceX experienced dazzling success and Boeing a long stream of troubles was certainly not anticipated by many, including me. However, from an SLS retirement perspective this may not make much difference. Clearly, the SpaceX Dragon 2 is fully operational. The fate of Starliner remains clouded, with no announcement of remedial steps or specifics regarding an upcoming test flight. NASA has mentioned a “potential” flight in 2025, but there are no details. This means that it is possible there might be serious discussion of retiring SLS before Starliner becomes operational, something again not anticipated by many. It will be interesting to see if SLS defenders bring forward the “Commercial Crew deal” as a reason to continue funding SLS until Starliner is operational.

Perhaps the most important observation here is that Orion is not so far ahead of Starliner that it represents a real alternative to it. After all, Starliner has flown crewed, and did successfully return to the Earth without a crew. It is hard to imagine that Boeing and NASA are going to walk away from Starliner with no clear replacement on the horizon. The only potential alternative would appear to be a crewed version of Dream Chaser, and the cargo version of Dream Chaser has yet to fly even once.

So, more than likely, Starliner will continue and become operational at some point, probably in 2025, but no guarantees. That pesky bell will toll – maybe.

Second Criterion: Where do we stand on the 10 consecutive Falcon Heavy flights?

There is little possibility in the mind of our conservative space planners, whether they reside at NASA or the administration, of backing off from the SLS unless there are at least two alternative heavy lift vehicles (NASA defines Heavy Lift as 20-50 tons to low-Earth orbit) at full operational status, which we will define for this discussion as 10 successful flights. With exactly ten successful Falcon Heavy flights notched (the first flight of the Falcon Heavy was not included as it used somewhat different hardware), the bell is fully rung on this criterion. The current list of consecutive successful Falcon Heavy flights includes:

    1. April 11, 2019: Arabsat 2
    2. June 25, 2019: STP-2U/U.S. Air Force
    3. November 1, 2022: USSF-44
    4. January 15, 2023: USSF-67
    5. May 1, 2023: Viasat 3 Americas
    6. July 29, 2023: Jupiter 3/Echostar 24
    7. October 13, 2023: NASA Psyche mission
    8. December 29, 2023: USSF-52 (Boeing X-37B)
    9. June 25, 2024: GOES-19 weather satellite (GOES-U)
    10. October 14, 2024: NASA Europa Clipper

Third Criterion: When will a Heavy Lift Vehicle other than the Falcon Heavy fly?

Candidate #1: Vulcan

United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan rocket now has notched two successful flights to orbit. On January 8th, 2024 the Vulcan Centaur roared off the pad at SLC-41 in Cape Canaveral, lofting the Peregrine lander toward the Moon and a Celestis burial payload containing, among other things, the ashes of deceased NSS leader Mark Hopkins. Although the Peregrine did not reach the Moon, the ashes of Mark Hopkins may make him the first L5/NSS member to reach deep space. With the delay of the Dream Chaser, a second Vulcan flight on October 4, 2024 carried a mass simulator, and lost a solid fuel booster nozzle, but still reached the correct orbit.

The Vulcan manifest looks over-stuffed, with many Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser, U.S. Space Force, and Amazon Project Kuiper payloads in the offing. There are more than ten Vulcan flights manifested for 2025 alone, so the real issue is whether ULA can launch once a month. My guess is probably not, but surely by 2026 the Vulcan will hit ten consecutive successful flights, and the 2nd heavy lift bell will toll.

Perhaps more importantly, Vulcan already has demonstrated enough reliability and capability that it should be in the mix for conservative space planners to consider it a serious option.

Candidate #2: New Glenn

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket rocketed off the pad in the wee hours of the morning as I write this today, lifting a Blue Ring simulator to LEO. There is clearly work to be done, as the first stage booster landing on a drone ship failed, but orbit was achieved on the first try, a significant achievement. Like Vulcan, New Glenn has a full manifest, so the main question is what launch cadence can they achieve, and how quickly will they achieve it. However, given the extensive testing of the BE4 first stage methlox engines as part of the Vulcan rocket, and the even more extensive testing of the 2nd stage BE3 hydrolox engines on New Shepard, the New Glenn has a level of fundamental soundness not seen in many “first flights” of rockets. The remaining lesson Blue Origin needs to master to compete with SpaceX is supersonic retro-propulsion for first stage landings, and that might take ten flights or more.

However New Glenn has already demonstrated enough success to be taken seriously as a heavy lift alternative to SLS, and although, as with Vulcan, the bell might not ring this year, but surely in 2026 it will ring out loud and clear.

Candidate #3: Are there any others?

When I last put pen to paper on this topic, the Terran-R seemed like it was a potential heavy lift competitor, although well behind. Time has not been kind to Relativity Space, and they may be on their way out as a launch company. However, there are two new, serious contenders – the Rocket Lab Neutron and the Stoke Space Nova – but both will not achieve ten consecutive launches until after 2026, and they are both a bit on the small side compared to Vulcan and New Glenn. Although the Ariane 6 has at long last been launched once, it totally lacks reusability, and really represents an earlier generation of technology compared to the Falcons, Vulcans, and New Glenn. The sad truth is that when it comes to our future in space, Europe is just “not there.”

Candidate #4: Starship/Superheavy

As you may have heard, the 7th test flight of Starship/SuperHeavy was also as I write this today. This number is sufficiently large that you might think it was game over for SLS, but Starship seems to be setting a new record for innovative test flights that don’t actually orbit any payload. Thus, the “counter” of consecutive successes has not yet started for Starship/SuperHeavy. But at the same time this program has seen unprecedented achievements, notably in catching the returning first stage booster twice with a set of giant mechanical arms. The loss of the totally redesigned Block 2 Starship today does not properly convey the status of the program. In the 6th test flight, the first stage recovery was aborted, but the Block 1 Starship made it all the way to a graceful descent into the Indian Ocean under power. The 5th test flight saw the first catch of the returning first stage, a truly amazing sight to behold.

So where does this leave things? With two successful catches of the first stage, SpaceX seems to be on a solid path to achieving first stage reuse, which is crucial for lowering costs and increasing launch rate. The hard part has always been second stage reuse, although those “landings” in the Indian Ocean look like progress has been made. The real “gotcha” of Starship appears to be that it is over-weight, and is being stretched to increase the payload to orbit. That stretching process is going to take a while and produce a few more RUDs before it achieves the shining reliability the Falcon 9 shows on an almost daily basis – 134 launches in 2024, and 8 so far in the first 16 days of 2025.

Will the first “operational” flight of Starship/SuperHeavy occur in 2025, i.e. one where it reaches orbit and launches payload? This seems virtually certain, but with the rapid pace of innovation in the Starship program, basic stability of operations may not be seen until 2026, or even later. What Starship is attempting:

  • All methlox operation with the new Raptor engines
  • Full first stage reuse with return to the launching gantry
  • Full second stage reuse with return to a catch tower
  • In-orbit fuel depots and refueling
  • Landing on the Moon with crews
  • Large payload capacity (150 tons) coupled with large fairing size (9 meters).

This is greatly beyond the goals of Vulcan and New Glenn, and will take a while.

Meanwhile, how is the SLS coming along?

On November 16, 2022, the first Block 1 SLS roared off the pad, briefly becoming the world’s most powerful launch vehicle on the Artemis 1 mission to launch 10 cubesats and an Orion capsule around the Moon.  This success seemed at the time to make it certain that SLS would be used for at least the next two Artemis missions.  However, here we are in 2025 with Artemis 2 delayed to NET April 2026 due to various issues, including Orion heat shield performance.

Originally planned for 2025 and now postponed to mid-2027, Artemis 3 will rendezvous with a Starship lunar lander in orbit around the Moon and return a crew to the lunar surface for the first time in over 50 years. A deal has again been reached between “old space” and newspace – SLS/Orion will launch people to the Moon, but the actual landing on the Moon will use the Starship, assuring that at the conclusion of Artemis 3, the SLS will not actually be required to complete subsequent Artemis missions. Many commentators have pointed out that the reliable Falcon 9/Dragon 2 might launch a crew separately from Starship/SuperHeavy to avoid the need to human rate the new vehicle.

Way out in 2028 or later, it is currently envisioned that a Block 1B SLS will launch a habitation module into lunar orbit, joining it to an earlier module launched by a Falcon Heavy. The crew will then dock with another Starship for a second lunar landing.

And here we sit ….

Waiting for the new administration to take office, wondering exactly what is going to happen. Will the defenders of SLS circle the wagons, and keep the vehicle flying, at least through Artemis 2, or maybe Artemis 3? Or will the opponents of SLS at long last gain the upper hand, and force significant program changes on Artemis? And if there were significant program changes, what would they be?

Some major Artemis program elements seem unlikely to change, including the Blue Origin and SpaceX lunar landers, the lunar suits, rovers, and habitats, and perhaps surprisingly to some, the Orion capsule.  The components at the greatest risk are SLS and the Gateway, which is only considered needed due to the limitations of SLS and the ESA-built Orion service module.

The Falcon Heavy waits in the wings – tan, fit, and ready. New Glenn and Vulcan are at least flying.  Starship/Superheavy shows exceptional promise and has achieved mighty things, but it is not ready for prime time at this moment. When in doubt, guess 50/50. Excitement guaranteed.

© 2025 Dale Skran

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