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NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

cnn.com

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Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#151

Post by rkomorn »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #147
boxed wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to keep two things in your mind at the same time: Elon Musk sometimes say things that are true. Elon Must sometimes say things that are not true. In this case, it's the first one.

Considering their contract just went back up for grabs I’m not sure how true that statement is. > you need to keep two things in your mind at the same time This was unnecessary and patronizing.

> Considering their contract just went back up for grabs I’m not sure how true that statement is.

TBH, with this administration, I wouldn't trust whatever either NASA or SpaceX say or do as a sign of anything.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#152

Post by ACCount37 »

floating-io wrote: post #84
ACCount37 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blue Origin is explicitly named in Duffy's statement. And if SpaceX's Starship HLS catches enough delays, they can slide into Blue Origin's Blue Moon HLS timeline - which is now being developed for Artemis 5, in 2030. On top of working on a HLS lander, Blue Origin has a pretty large rocket developed already - New Glenn. They just don't have the reusability or the launch cadence, and their HLS needs at least two launc…

> Blue Moon HLS is considerably less complex than Starship HLS That's the one thing in your comment I disagree with. Starship-based HLS has basically one base vehicle, modified into three variants (tanker, depot, and the lander itself). Refueling is done in LEO. Blue Origin's HLS has three completely unique vehicles with no commonality (New Glenn, Transporter, and the lander), and refuels in multiple orbits, one of w…

I do think that Blue Origin HLS is less complex overall, but I agree that they aren't dealing with the same kind of complexity. Both companies are playing to their strengths there.

A major weakness of SpaceX's HLS approach is that it requires them to launch a lot of the same vehicle in a fairly short succession. But SpaceX are the kings of high volume aerospace manufacturing, and they are the driving force behind US launch cadence going up. Even if Starship reusability isn't truly perfected in time for Artemis HLS, they are already building those Starships pretty fast, and can eat some refueling vehicle losses.

Blue Origin doesn't have the raw performance figures of Starship, or SpaceX's unmatched manufacturing and launch cadence. So their HLS architecture is lighter and less launch hungry. That comes at an engineering cost of having to use more specialized vehicles. And they are using LH2 fuel - which delivers more of a punch per weight, but is even harder to stay on top of than CH4. More engineering effort would be required to store and transfer that in orbit, dealing with boil-off and all - but Blue Origin has used liquid hydrogen extensively already, so they have experience with it.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#153

Post by chasd00 »

trenchpilgrim wrote: post #110
chasd00 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Boeing or the military industrial complex would handle these things with precision and delivered ahead of time that's fantasy. I've never heard of either entity delivering on time or on budget let alone ahead of time.

A-4? F-117? B-21?

War fighting technology like aircraft is a different thing than orbital rockets and spacecraft. I'm not trying to downplay those achievements, especially the F-117, but it's apples to oranges.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#154

Post by verzali »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #68
jordanb wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is starship on schedule?

> Is starship on schedule? Difficult to say relative to current Artemis timelines, which have to date been mainly delayed by Orion. They're currently looking on schedule to perform an orbital propellant transfer in 2026. That likely means a commercial launch before the end of next year, which is crazy. How that relates to HLS is up in the air, and probably will be until the end of next year.

Yes, but in the original schedule on HLS Starship was supposed to have done the prop transfer in Q4 2022, an uncrewed lunar landing in Q1 2024, and the actual thing in Q1 2025.

Of course that was always wishful thinking. I'm sure SpaceX has their "real" schedule somewhere, and maybe NASA has one too (at least from what I've heard, it is likely they have an unofficial idea of it somewhere).

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#155

Post by verzali »

destitude wrote: post #87
sofixa wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Starships will drop the cost to other bodies Assuming SpaceX can deliver it. They've failed to do a successful test flight with even a fraction of the officially planned capacity. Who knows how long it will take them, if they can even pull it off, to deliver it.

They could have delivered today if they weren't concerned about reusability.

Probably not for the price they offered though.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#156

Post by altcognito »

inglor_cz wrote: post #56
altcognito wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Not even" only applies to those that haven't followed the events of the past decade. 1. USA is no longer sponsoring groundbreaking research 2. USA had already begun outsourcing research to companies that are not grounded in long term employment of researchers.

In general, yes, but in this specific instance, groundbreaking research or its lack isn't the core of the problem. This is mostly about the new human-rated lander, which is an engineering problem. Notably, the US never had a reasonably safe spaceship, although Dragon may yet prove good. Both Apollos and Space Shuttles, developed under NASA, were pretty dangerous to their crews.

I debated exactly that before posting, I appreciate your comment.

I do think there are some novel challenges left for the Artemis project however that do require a lot of research and development before they are put before the boring engineering happens.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#157

Post by kreetx »

pfdietz wrote: post #98
nilamo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why must there be a NEED? Why did we ever send ships across the ocean to explore? Where was the need? People like doing science, and so we're doing science.

That was (for the western hemisphere) mostly to steal gold and silver from other civilizations. Oh, and to grow addictive drugs for export, like in Virginia. It was never done for other than banal reasons, although I'm sure pious rationalizations were offered to make people feel better about the ongoing genocides.

Wasn't it to discover alternative trade routes and also to show physically that the world is round? I think they didn't know that there were usable land to grow tobacco when they started.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#159

Post by panick21 »

destitude wrote: post #103

Considering nobody in the world can compete with SpaceX currently this seems purely political in nature. The EU is struggling to even come up with an answer to reusable rockets. China is the closest and will likely have something equivalent to the Falcon 9 within the next 2 years. But someone in the USA? People are delusional. Sure it is always best to have competitors but how did that work for Boeing/NASA/Starliner?…

> China is the closest and will likely have something equivalent to the Falcon 9 within the next 2 years.

That's wildly optimistic. Falcon 9 launches operationally 100+ a year and single boosters with 20+ uses. Even if in the next 2 years, China has some kind of first stage that lands, its in no way 'like Falcon 9'.

So lets not be unreasonably optimistic just because its China. China isn't magic and they wont have such a rocket no matter if they invest in it or not.

> But someone in the USA? People are delusional.

BlueOrigin is much closer then anybody in China. They have actually attempted launching a large rocket, China has not. And BlueOrigin has made its own advacned reusable engine and flown them to Orbit, argaubly China has not done that.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#160

Post by philistine »

the__alchemist wrote: post #136
dotnet00 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were serious, they'd properly look into ending SLS after the ones that are being built are launched, cancel the upgrade, go after the company that spent the entire launch tower budget before even starting construction, open up bids for rockets to fly Orion (probably Vulcan or New Glenn IIRC), and sort out their space suit issues. Maybe also seriously threaten Boeing with cancelations and restrictions for thei…

I wonder if we'll get a demonstration from China in the next few decades.

China wants to put the first woman on the Moon before 2030.
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