The Space Advocate Newsletter, March 2026

This month

Artemis has yet to launch a single human into space, but it's still the most successful return-to-the-Moon program in history. The Space Exploration Initiative, announced by George H. W. Bush in 1989, withered under its $500 billion price tag and lack of congressional support. The 2004 Vision for Space Exploration was starved of promised funding by the White House and rapidly fell behind schedule. It was ultimately abandoned by the Obama administration. Artemis has now survived two presidential transitions. Clearly, no small feat.

But the Artemis program of 2026 is not the Artemis program of 2019. The program architecture is changing. NASA administrator Jared Isaacman recently shelved the pricey Block 1B upgrade of the Space Launch System, added a new Artemis test flight in 2027, and may abandon efforts to land on the Moon's south pole, at least initially. The future of the Gateway lunar station now appears uncertain, despite Congress directing nearly $3 billion to the project over the next four years. It also seems likely that the administration will once again propose to cancel the SLS after its first few flights, proposing to instead rely on SpaceX's Starship to ferry astronauts from Earth to the Moon and back. Congress, meanwhile, has teed up legislation that largely sticks to the status quo. For a program that is supposedly two years away from its first lunar landing, this is a remarkable amount of uncertainty.

Apollo, by contrast, locked in its program architecture by 1962, seven years before its first landing. That's when NASA committed to the lunar orbit rendezvous strategy. The initial contracts for the command and service modules and lunar lander were awarded in 1961 and 1962, respectively. With this clarity, NASA and its contractors were free to focus on solving the engineering problems of sending astronauts to the Moon. With Artemis, NASA is still deciding what it needs and who will build it.

It's worthwhile to compare Artemis to Apollo, despite the differences in technology, geopolitics, and private sector capability. More than 50 years on, Apollo remains the one successful historical example of a human lunar program. It surely has something to teach us.

Funding is a potent point of comparison. Despite the rhetoric of a new "space race," the United States is funding Artemis at levels akin to a casual stroll. NASA has spent, on average, $6 billion (in 2025 dollars) per year on Artemis elements. Spending reached a high point this year at nearly $10 billion, about 40% of NASA's budget. Apollo, however, when adjusted for inflation, enjoyed peak spending of $42 billion per year — that doesn't include major facilities and infrastructure buildouts. The United States would ultimately spend more than $300 billion (in 2025 dollars) on Apollo over 12 years. Artemis has cost a third of that amount.

The contrast extends to lunar science and NASA's workforce. Under Apollo, NASA sent 21 robotic missions to the moon in seven years at a cost of $12 billion (in 2025 dollars) to characterize the surface and test landing systems. Under Artemis, NASA has relied on commercial companies to deliver science instruments (among other goals) and has spent $3.5 billion for two successful landings in the same timeframe. And whereas NASA's workforce nearly tripled in the first five years of Apollo — to 36,000 civil servants — NASA has recently lost nearly a fifth of its workforce, and is directed to return to the Moon with its smallest headcount since 1960.

Perhaps the comparison is unfair. Artemis operates in a fundamentally different political and industrial environment than Apollo did. But it is equally unfair to place similar (or greater) expectations on a program where the most stable element has been its name. Labeling Artemis a "race" creates further direct comparisons to Apollo, despite the modern effort enjoying none of the funding or national political benefits of such a designation. It also further risks undermining the very things that were intended to make Artemis different from Apollo: durable international partnerships, rich scientific returns and potential resource utilization at the south pole, and a sustained program that endures for decades. Apollo may have won its race, but the program ended a mere three years later — a comparison Artemis should endeavor to avoid.

Until next month,

Casey Dreier
Chief of Space Policy
The Planetary Society

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What I’m reading this month

“Learning Space Policy” series by Bhavya Lal
I find Bhavya to be the most insightful and intellectually rigorous person working in space policy, and she’s started a new Substack that explores the fundamental concepts in the field.

NASA grappling with planetary science funding shortfall (spacenews.com)
Despite having its budget mostly restored, closeout costs for Mars Sample Return, spending minimums mandated by Congress, and inflation-related cost increases of operational missions have left the division scrambling to continue its existing programs.

If China returns to the Moon first, will Americans care? (thespacereview.com)
Interesting perspective on whether the “space race” narrative is truly connected to the popular mindset in the United States.

Ground Truth

Data visualization and analysis

Artemis may be framed in terms of a new space race, but its funding tells a different story. Taking 2017 as the “start” of Artemis (the signing of Space Policy Directive #1 which set the Moon as NASA’s destination), Artemis has been funded at a pace more akin to a casual stroll, peaking only recently at $10 billion a year after an infusion of cash by Congress. Compare that to Apollo, which peaked at over $40 billion within three years of its program start.