Whilst I was engaged in not-outer-space, which engagement has engaged me for some months, last week Bob Mahoney defended the Gateway concept. Not the sporadic promises floated here and there; Mahoney means the original. Back before NASA promoted pronouns. Before NASA promoted Islam.
This blog started from Doug Plata; Mahoney is, here, rebutting Plata. Mahoney is rebutting 2015-era Hop David too inasmuch as the Gateway orbit - TLL2-Southern Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit - competes with Farquhar's L2 which Hop touted back then. Overall-STL2 is now occupied, by the James Webb telescope. (Hop is, since, aware of NRHO but hasn't posted about it directly yet.)
Mahoney's sell-point is that NRHO should be modular, so flexible. Once at NRHO you are doing better than you are at LEO, in terms of being closer to outer space. LEO becomes a gas-station.
Mahoney does admit one problem with the Gateway - politics. Several projects have been binned because they overran estimates. The JWST came within a whisker of the bin. And then there's NASA's pronoun fetish. Plata's alternative "just wait for Starship and we won't need Gateway" does, at least, bypass NASA. Maybe Axiom can build it in NRHO instead.
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