In his 1961 novel The Winter of Our Discontent, John Steinbeck wrote of loss, “It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”
The death of NASA’s Exploration Upper Stage today represents the inverse of that sentiment. The world of spaceflight is so much brighter now that its light has gone out.
The rocket’s death came via a seemingly pedestrian notice posted on a government procurement website: “NASA/MSFC intends to issue a sole source contract to acquire next-generation upper stages for use in Space Launch System (SLS) Artemis IV and Artemis V from United Launch Alliance (ULA).”
If the Exploration Upper Stage was anything, it was a survivor—a testament to the power of pork, and the value of political support from key southern senators in Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and Florida.
Why it came into existence
Contracted to Boeing more than a decade ago, the Exploration Upper Stage upgrade was intended to allow the SLS rocket to launch not just the Orion spacecraft to the Moon, but large payloads alongside it. That the development of capable rockets by SpaceX, Blue Origin, and United Launch Alliance to deliver large cargo to the Moon rendered it obsolete mattered, for a long time, not at all.
So why have the Exploration Upper Stage at all?
The short answer is, mostly, pork (excess spending). But let’s unpack it a little further. When Congress and NASA created the SLS rocket in 2011, they always intended the first launch or two to use an “interim” upper stage, essentially a modified version of the Delta IV rocket’s upper stage. But that rocket faced retirement (it was too expensive in the face of emerging competition), so NASA needed a more permanent upper stage.