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Originally Posted by TrevorW
... did NASA forget things  |
Actually, yes. There was a significant loss of working-level expertise in manned spaceflight between the Shuttle program and Artemis. Space agencies need to grow expertise incrementally. It'll be a few years yet before the space industry is large enough that there'll be significant mobility in experienced staff, IMHO.
Add to that the difference in funding profiles. Artemis is (was) a smaller share of a relatively smaller NASA budget. NASA's budget during Apollo peaked at 4.4% of all US Govt spending; today's total NASA budget is around 0.5%. Also, the Artemis budget is spread out more over time. The relative lower cost per launch (Artemis vs Apollo), sadly, won't be realised as the program has been cut short, including cancellation of lunar gateway.
Speaking of per-launch costs, private space flight isn't cheap but Starship costs are slated to be much lower because of design approaches and re-usability (though Artemis and Starship have different profiles and risks). Still, Starship isn't a success, yet.
With cancellation of Artemis after flight III, and lunar gateway, and pending retirement of the ISS, NASA risks losing the remainder of its internal expertise in manned space vehicles and may rely completely on industry. It seems as though NASA will entrench "forgetting things".
Edit:
I didn't see Martin's reply before posting.
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Originally Posted by Startrek
Starship launch of only $2 million dollars
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I thought I read the per-launch target cost was US$50m? That's a lot cheaper than Artemis at $4.1 billion, though.