Trevor Merlman
It’s been a pivotal year in spaceflight, wrapping up many of the most important stories that have dominated the industry over the last 10-15 years.
Consider the situation in 2010. A few large government space agencies dominated spaceflight activity. NASA was still flying its venerable space shuttle without a clear plan for deep space exploration. The James Webb Space Telescope remained in development hell. Russia is the world’s leading launch provider, launching as many rockets into space as the United States and China combined that year. At that time, China’s longest manned space flight was his four days. A lot has changed in the last decade or so.
2022 was a watershed moment as so many major articles since 2010 have come to an end. In that sense, it feels like the end of an era and the beginning of a new era in spaceflight. So in this story, we’re going to look back at five of these major space stories and try to predict some of the remaining major ones for the 2020s.
An exciting but uncertain road awaits.
recall
james webb space telescopeNASA has spent nearly 20 years and $10 billion developing this large and complex space telescope. It has been the subject of countless articles describing all of its potential breakthroughs, but also its endless cost overruns and delays.
The telescope was finally launched on Christmas Day 2021, after which the first half of 2022 was spent in a large-scale deployment process and commissioning of scientific instruments. But Webb did wonders when astronomers finally turned it up into the heavens.
The process of designing, building, and testing this telescope on the ground took so long and cost so much money that we may never see a telescope like it again. It may be assembled in space without Either way, Webb’s development days are over. His era of discovery began.
May you live long and prosper.
space launch systemThis was another major development program by NASA in the 2010s, when the space agency aimed to build a super-heavy rocket. The program has spent about $20 billion. However, while the Webb Space Telescope introduced many new elements and represented state-of-the-art technology, the SLS rocket did not.
The rocket was controversial from the start, as SLS reconfigured parts of the space shuttle. Even the diameter of the main engine, solid rocket boosters, and core stage were precisely matched to the Shuttle’s external fuel tank. The rocket was seen as a congressionally mandated program to keep workers in paid employment for NASA and large contractors like Boeing and Northrop. The justification for this decision became increasingly untenable as the 2010s progressed and private launch companies such as SpaceX proved far more efficient than governments.
An additional issue is that although the rocket was originally scheduled to launch at the end of 2016, it did not fly until November 2022.
But once the SLS rocket launched, its mission was flawless. The Artemis I mission got off to a great start with the SLS rocket launching Orion into its target orbit. This concludes the story of the “block 1” development of the SLS rocket. It’s nice to have a space story with a happy ending.
