Artemis: A Program With No Compelling Rationale

NASA has a Big New Task it is eagerly working on: an Artemis program to have  astronauts go back to the moon. This is something that was already accomplished quite a few times more than 50 years ago, when US astronauts not only orbited the moon, but walked on the moon, and drove around the moon in a little vehicle rather like a golf cart. In a 2022 post I pointed out that NASA's web page promoting the Artemis program miserably failed to articulate a convincing rationale for the mission. The moon is a lifeless rock of no real scientific interest, and its surface is a very lethal environment for reasons discussed in the infographic below. 

A recent article on the LiveScience.com site is entitled "Artemis II: NASA is preparing for a return to the moon, but why is it going back?" The article writer named Pester tries to conjure up a case for the Artemis program, but fails to make any compelling case. 

Here are some of the statements made in the article, and why they do not hold up well to scrutiny. 

• "It's also no secret that China threatens to overtake the U.S. as the leader in space exploration, and the U.S. doesn't want to fall behind." This is the old "space race" rationale used to try to justify the unnecessary Apollo program. We were told that we must spend many billions landing men on the moon, because we cannot ever let the Russians beat us in a space race.  Such a rationale was never a convincing reason for funding the Apollo program, and it is not a convincing reason for funding the Artemis mission. 
• "From a scientific perspective, humanity still has much to learn about the moon. Earth's natural satellite has a long history preserved in its rocks, and it could help researchers better understand our own planet, the solar system and the universe at large." Rock samples from the moon have already been retrieved, and such samples did not advance human knowledge in any notable way. Retrieving additional rocks from the moon will not help us better understand our planet, our solar system, or our  universe at large. And if you want to retrieve such samples, they can be retrieved at a far lower cost by unmanned robotic missions. 
• "The moon and Earth are like twins that have been dancing around each other since the beginning of the solar system around 4.5 billion years ago, said Sara Russell, a planetary scientist at the Natural History Museum in London. This means they have a shared history of impacts from asteroids, comets and other objects, 'It just has this 4-and-a-half-billion-year record of what has happened on its surface' Russell told Live Science. 'We can see how affected it has been by impacts, which have also happened to the Earth, but we don't see evidence for that on the Earth so easily.' "  Oops, what a huge failure this is to explain any compelling rationale for further studying the moon. It is ridiculous to claim that Earth and the moon are like twins. Earth is a lovely planet teeming with life, and the moon is a lifeless rock. No, Earth and the moon do not "have a shared history of impacts from asteroids, comets and other objects." A comet or asteroid hitting the moon was not a comet or asteroid hitting Earth. Craters on the moon provide evidence of asteroid or meteor impacts in its past, but the topic of exactly what bombardments the moon received long ago is not an important scientific topic. Not 1% of the population has any interest in what type of bombardments the moon received ages ago. There are endless thousands of scientific research topics very much more important and more worthy of funding than the bombardment history of the moon, which is pretty much the topic least worthy of scientific funding. 
• "Traveling to the moon with a crew will also enable mission scientists to pursue another, perhaps more disturbing, goal of the Artemis program — investigating the effects of space travel on human physiology. The Artemis II flight is an opportunity for new studies of astronaut health, including how space travel influences the body, mind and behavior, and how those impacts could affect future missions, according to NASA." There is no need to travel to the moon to research the effect of space travel on human physiology. You can do the same type of study with astronauts orbiting Earth.  What we have learned about effects such as cosmic rays is information very discouraging to any idea of colonizing the moon (information summarized in the infographic above). Having no atmosphere, the moon is subject to constant bombardment by radiation from deep space, with the worst being cancer-causing particles called cosmic rays. So anyone living for years on the moon would be forced to live underground. 
• "Space exploration is difficult, dangerous and expensive, so NASA needs to test its systems and its astronauts on the moon before sending them to farther destinations. Establishing a lunar base could be key to traveling to Mars."  Nonsense. Establishing a base on the moon will not be a dry run for sending men to Mars. And there is no reason why humans need to go to Mars. We sometimes hear "don't put all of your eggs in one basket" rationales for colonizing Mars. If you want to have people protected against the hazards of global warming or nuclear war or an asteroid strike, it is ten times easier to build underground colonies or undersea colonies than to build bases on the moon or Mars. 
• "NASA has claimed that if it can harvest the moon's water, the space agency can use it to help make drinking water, oxygen and rocket fuel — although this remains unproven."  There is virtually no water on the moon, making any "exploit lunar water resources" claims laughable.  
• "NASA has said that its moon strategy stimulates the commercial space industry and creates business opportunities in ways that could foster a lunar economy. The lunar economy currently stems from NASA working with private companies that provide commercial deliveries to support the space agency's mission. Essentially, NASA pays companies to take stuff to the moon."  This sounds like welfare for corporations, another case of the government acting to enrich giant corporations rather than doing something to help the common man keep his head above water. 
• "Moon mining has the potential to become a billion-dollar industry. The moon harbors resources like rare earth elements, which are mined for electronics on Earth, as well as a potential gold mine in its stocks of helium-3, which could eventually be used in nuclear fusion reactors to make near-limitless clean energy." There is no practical prospect of profitably mining the moon in the next two decades.  If such a thing is ever done, it would require some distant technology not available for many years, and such a possibility does not justify expenditures for Artemis in the next few years. 
• "If the U.S. is to win this second race for the moon, then the upcoming Artemis missions will need to remain on schedule. China wants to land its own astronauts on the moon before 2030, which is at most two years after the first Artemis lunar surface missions, assuming they are a success." More "space race" nonsense. We did not need to beat the Russians in the first "space race" to the moon, and we do not need to beat the Chinese in a second "space race" to the moon. 

After the successful launch of the Artemis II mission, which merely went into orbit around the moon, the Ars Technica site published an article entitled "Why is NASA bothering to go back to the Moon if we’ve already been there?" The author struggles to explain some convincing rationale, but all he gives is the emptiest of "handful of moonbeams" reasons. Along the way, he makes some interesting confessions such as these:

" In the end, success with Artemis II may provide a short blip of public bonhomie, but I don’t expect it to last. And with the turbulent news cycle of 2026, I expect Artemis II to be largely forgotten by most Americans before the end of April...Most polls show that as many as 90 percent of Americans don’t care about returning to the Moon or establishing a presence there."