President Trump’s historic second term targets a vision for the country with a renewed American resolve to lead, innovate, and exist without apology as the envy of the world.  He wants to put America First. A shining example of this vision is NASA, the crown jewel of American technological exceptionalism. NASA, the first and only agency to land men on the Moon, the agency that photographed the universe with Hubble and sent probes to all parts of our solar system and beyond. NASA is etched in the American psyche as the builders of rockets for a nation that builds, dares, and wins. Yet the current path of NASA’s ARTEMIS program reveals a troubling reality at odds with the President’s America First philosophy: a tangle of international compromises, subpar contractors, and disregard for astronaut safety that threatens to undermine America’s space legacy.¹

NASA’s Artemis program is a multi-phase effort to return humans to the Moon(with the first lunar landing planned for 2027), build a continuous lunar presence via the Gateway lunar space station, and prepare for future Mars missions.  Unfortunately, the Artemis program emphasizes partnership with less accomplished space agencies, leading to technical constraints that manifest in an overly complex and unsafe mission architecture for the manned lunar initiative.  By relying on American competence, NASA could reduce risk and complexity and beat China back to the Moon.

An America First vision for NASA demands bold engineering, human-centered design, and a rejection of bureaucratic overreach to restore U.S. dominance in the cosmos. President Trump has already made great steps toward this end. Public-private partnerships, a hallmark of Trump’s approach in his first term, have proven their worth. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, which ended U.S. reliance on Russian rockets in 2020, showcases how private industry can reduce costs and accelerate innovation.^2,3 The outsourcing of logistics like International Space Station resupply or sending robotic landers to the Moon allows NASA to concentrate resources on high-cost unsolved human exploration endeavors like a continuous human presence on the Moon or planting the American Flag on Mars.⁴ Putting assets in and around low earth orbit is now effectively accomplished by private industry, so building the infrastructure for cislunar space and beyond should be NASA’s foremost policy objective. These large objectives remain out of reach for private industry and other countries, who are just now starting to achieve low earth orbit and small robotic lunar landings.⁵ Artemis’s goals of returning humans to the Moon, building the infrastructure to enable a continuous lunar presence, and then leveraging those capabilities to send humans to Mars are inline with that policy emphasis. Artemis is an enormous first step in putting humans and very large, very heavy things into deep space orbits, exactly the step needed for the upcoming stage of human space exploration.⁶

Fall From Grace

Unfortunately, the Artemis program’s architecture for the 2027 lunar landing is a far cry from the elegant Apollo missions Americans remember from their history books: a single rocket carrying astronauts to the Moon and back.⁷ Apollo’s lunar orbit took two hours, used one rocket and landed two men on the lunar surface.⁸ Artemis 3 uses a 156-hour orbit, two rockets, 20+ launches, and also lands two people on the lunar surface.⁹ Yes, you read that correctly. Instead of one single Saturn V rocket, it requires almost twenty separate launches.¹⁰ The current scheme uses one Space Launch System (SLS) rocket launch with the Orion crew capsule on top, one SpaceX Starship rocket launch with the Human Landing System (HLS), 15-20 additional Starship rocket launches for propellant, an untested in-orbit propellant transfer, and multiple maneuvers in and around the Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO).¹¹ This highly elongated and oval orbit, greatly flattened from the basic circular orbit of Apollo, takes nearly 6.5 days to complete.¹² It is an overoptimized orbit that leaves astronauts highly vulnerable. A single misstep, like an underperforming engine, a propellant leak, or a minor scheduling shift could strand astronauts on the Moon for nearly a week or leave them adrift in space forever. The Artemis plan has needless, dangerous complexity. It is certainly not the bold, streamlined plan America deserves and is paying for.

How did this happen? Why would the world’s greatest space agency use this suboptimal plan?

A sizable portion of the blame starts with the Obama administration’s choice to partner with the European Space Agency (ESA) to build the service module for the Orion crew capsule.¹³ The service module is the bottom portion of the Orion spacecraft that contains the propulsive elements and is responsible for pushing and maneuvering the Orion spacecraft through space once separated from the other rocket stages.¹⁴ ESA was chosen as a partner to provide this service module in a barter arrangement: America would consider this procurement a fulfillment of ESA’s financial obligations to contribute to the International Space Station (ISS), while NASA would call this procurement a “cost savings” to the Orion program due to the hardware being provided by an external partner.¹⁵

Despite these political advantages, the ESA’s design for the Orion service module is disastrously unfit for the rocket. Its undersized engines lack the thrust performance to propel Orion into a better lunar orbit, thus necessitating the dangerous NRHO orbit (6.5 days) that puts astronauts at risk. This is a technical problem begotten by poor political choices. NASA could claim “cost savings” and international partnerships; Congress obtained a program that was harder to kill due to all the invested parties; the ESA received free Astronaut trips to the ISS, but the Artemis program was inflicted with a human space craft incapable of getting to a low lunar orbit.^16,17

Getting Back Up

Fortunately, the fixes to Orion are straightforward and can be implemented without derailing schedules or requiring integration with foreign partners. American engineers at Johnson Space Center should enhance the European-built Orion service module engine by using larger fuel tanks and cutting mass to boost performance, enabling Orion to operate in a circular orbit close to the Moon instead of the elongated and oval-shaped NRHO. A closer lunar orbit increases lander payload performance (more astronauts and cargo to the lunar surface) and significantly increases mission availability to the lunar surface and back (hours instead of 6.5 days between opportunities to return home). No more stranded astronauts or small mission payloads. This is not a cost-free fix, but Orion is the best hardware we have for carrying a crew to and from the Moon. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, the vehicle that ferries astronauts to and from the ISS, was designed for operations around the Earth and is not well suited for trips that extend to the Moon. It would need a beefier heat shield to survive the higher velocity lunar re-entry, more propulsive capability to allow travel to and from lunar orbits, an increase in duration capability for the life support system from days to weeks, increased shielding to protect crew from the harsher radiation environment of cislunar space, and quite a few other enhancements.¹⁸ Fixing Orion is the fastest way to return Americans to the Moon.

The story of Orion’s partnership with the ESA should be a cautionary tale. An America First approach to space exploration demands significantly more skepticism of international and inclusion-based partnerships.  Partnerships with foreign countries should be evaluated with consideration to America’s space dominance and technical applicability. The underpowered ESA service module contribution is just one example – NASA and ESA partnered on the Mars Sample Return mission, a $10 billion Rube Goldberg scheme that planned to bring less than twenty pounds of rock from Mars to Earth via multiple rovers, spacecraft, and a flying Martian helicopter.¹⁹ In another example of American bureaucrats ignoring American engineering excellence, NASA has recently partnered with the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to build a lunar rover for the Artemis program.²⁰ JAXA helped Japan become the fifth country to soft land on the moon in early 2024 (partially successfully, 50 years after America)[3], while their commercial industry has had significantly less luck – the Japanese commercial space company “ispace” has now crashed two landers into the lunar surface.^21,22 America has successfully built and landed rovers on the Moon and other planets for half a century – why entrust this critical piece of mission hardware to a foreign nation? NASA and space powerhouse Senegal have partnered up as well.²³ The sum of Senegal’s space accomplishment is a solitary satellite launch.²⁴ This partnership with Senegal will not impact any hardware or program design, but is reflective of the present problematic paradigm. NASA should only have partners that provide competitive advantage or industry expertise, and not waste resources pursuing agreements that impede America’s lunar goals.

Realigning Orbit

An America First vision for space exploration would discourage NASA from seeking expertise from abroad when it can be found right here in the homeland. Private American companies are launching rockets at an unprecedented cadence, and Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost mission completed the first successful private commercial lunar landing in 2025.^25,26 NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative targets commercial companies with procurement contracts for robotic missions on the lunar surface.²⁷ These efforts should be significantly expanded as an investment in lunar infrastructure. Why are Americans paying for astronauts of other countries to take a jaunt up to the ISS when those same tax dollars could pay American companies to solve urgent technical obstacles to moon exploration? As an example, the Human Lander System (HLS)’s powerful engines risk creating massive craters and dust clouds on the lunar surface, obscuring navigation and significantly increasing risk of a failed landing.²⁸ Directing lunar payload providers to deploy navigation beacons and construct landing pads would ensure safe, precise landings, preventing our astronauts from crashing into craters or navigating blindly through clouds of regolith dust. These payload missions to the moon are the perfect opportunity for American space companies to demonstrate their homegrown skills and bring American jobs to space.

An America First vision for NASA rejects bloated international collaborations and politically motivated contractor choices that dilute excellence. It demands a streamlined Artemis program, robust lunar infrastructure, and a focus on strategic priorities over politically motivated projects like climate-monitoring satellites. This vision can usher in a golden age of space exploration, planting American boots on the Moon, Mars, and beyond – but only with choices that put America First in space. Let’s unleash our homegrown engineers, safeguard our astronaut heroes, and build a future where the stars bear the mark of American greatness.

1. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, “Artemis,” NASA. ↩︎
2. Jen Rae Wang,” New Space Policy Directive Calls for Human Expansion Across Solar System”, NASA. ↩︎
3. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, “What is Commercial Crew”, NASA. ↩︎
4. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, “Commercial Lunar Payload Services”, NASA. ↩︎
5. Julie Siebert, “Countries with Space Programs: An Overview”, Space Insider Tech. ↩︎
6. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, “NASA’s Space Launch System Reference Guide”, NASA. ↩︎
7. Richard W. Orloff, “Apollo by the Numbers: A Statistical Reference”, NASA. ↩︎
8. John Houbolt, “Manned Lunar Landing Through Use of Lunar Orbit Rendezvous”, NASA. ↩︎
9. Ibid. ↩︎
10. Jeff Foust, “Starship lunar lander missions to require nearly 20 launches, NASA says”, Space News. ↩︎
11. Jeff Foust, “SpaceX making progress on Starship in-space refueling technologies, Space News. ↩︎
12. Nujoud Merancy, “NASA’s Moon to Mars Architecture Workshop, How: NRHO – The Artemis Orbit”, NASA. ↩︎
13. “The making of the European Service Modules”, European Space Agency. ↩︎
14. Ibid. ↩︎
15. “ESA’s International Space Station barter agreements”, European Space Agency. ↩︎
16. Ibid. ↩︎
17. Stephan Clark, “Orion capsule leaves lunar orbit, heads for moon flyby and return to Earth”, Space Flight Now. ↩︎
18. Tony Antonelli, “The right tool to go to the moon”, Politico. ↩︎
19. Will Robinson-Smith, “Nelson: Decision on Mars Sample Return expected before new administration takes office”, Space Flight Now. ↩︎
20. Faith McKie and Kathryn Hambleton, “NASA, Japan Advance Space Cooperation, Sign Agreement for Lunar Rover”, NASA. ↩︎
21. Bill Chappell, “Japan succeeds in soft landing on the moon, but its lander has a power problem”, NPR. ↩︎
22. Will Robinson-Smith, “ispace’s Resilience lander crash lands on the Moon”, Space Flight Now. ↩︎
23. Bethany Stevans and Elizabeth Shaw, “NASA Welcomes Senegal as Newest Artemis Accords Signatory”, NASA. ↩︎
24. Sarah Rand, “Senegal Joins The Space Race With A Groundbreaking Satellite Launch”, Travel Noire. ↩︎
25. Brian Wang, “SpaceX Launched Over 80% of All Orbital Payload Mass in Q1 2023”, Next Big Future. ↩︎
26. “Mission Complete: Blue Ghost Mission 1 to the Moon”, Firefly Aerospace.
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27. Ibid. ↩︎
28. Joe Atkinson, “NASA Cameras on Blue Ghost Capture First-of-its-Kind Moon Landing Footage”, NASA. ↩︎