The final mission of the Apollo program, Apollo 17, took place from December 7–19, 1972. Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt (the only professional geologist to travel to the moon) set foot on the moon. It was the last time humans visited the moon or traveled outside of low-Earth orbit. All that is expected to change this morning when the uncrewed Artemis I mission lifts off between 8:30–10:30 a.m. The Artemis program aims to return to the moon and, ultimately, travel to Mars.

Eakinomics is a soulless policy calculator, yet has just enough free testosterone to love a big rocket. But beyond the pyrotechnic display, what are the policy issues in play?

Looking forward, the threshold issue is usually framed as the value of human space flight beyond low-Earth orbit (e.g., to the space station) versus devoting those dollars to unmanned science missions. That would include the value of returning to the moon for the first time in 50 years. Framing it that way is not quite right, however. There is no reason why the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket could not be used for life science payloads as well as the Orion crew capsule, so the issue in the future is the exact mix of science and manned flights.

The second issue is how one gets to Mars. In most scenarios, the Mars vehicle is assembled in space. Using a heavy lifter like an SLS rocket can have a much larger payload than the Space X or Blue Horizon rockets. That means the assembly could be accomplished in many fewer trips. Without knowledge of the cost structures of these options, one cannot know for sure what makes the most sense, but this is the issue at hand.

That’s what is at stake for space policy. Get ready for liftoff.