Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 1001 posts

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

#231

Post by HippyTed »

terminalshort wrote: post #201
foxyv wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starship has yet to demonstrate that capability. They would need to show rapid re-usability for it to be viable. Not to mention docking and orbital re-fueling. Falcon Heavy seems to have that capability though. I suspect that Starship will have similar cost to Falcon Heavy when they get done with it. Maybe marginally cheaper. The re-entry problem is really throwing a wrench into things.

SpaceX has already successfully landed and reused a booster, which is the most expensive part of the rocket. As for the reentry problem, that seems to have been solved in the last couple of test flights. Still much more economically viable than SLS even if they can't reuse the upper stage.

As someone who is a tad skeptical of SpaceX duevto their side claims, I have to give it to them, that last launch of Starship proved they are making some real progress again. Wasnt looking good at the start of the year but now their re-entries are doing fairly well.

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

#232

Post by logifail »

panick21 wrote: post #117
jordanb wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is starship on schedule?

SLS was 6 years and like 10-20 billion $ over budget and nobody ever complainged, in fact they got consistantly more and more money. And that is for technology that is fundamentally from the 1970s. Starship is trying to do the hardest thing in the history of space flight. And of course its not on schedule, its schedule was always insane. The way of approching things as 'is X on schedule' is a fundamentally false way…

> SLS was 6 years and like 10-20 billion $ over budget and nobody ever complainged, in fact they got consistantly more and more money

Ah, but SLS were the right kind of people. Allegedly. /s

SpaceX, less so. Allegedly.

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

#233

Post by TriangleEdge »

ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote: post #199
heisgone wrote: post #197

I can imagine SpaceX choosing to self-finance a mission to the moon and beat NASA at it.

> I can imagine That probably does require some imagination. Starting with any incentive to do so.

SpaceX advert on the moon, giant and bright for the world to see every night for the next 50 years.

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

#234

Post by xnx »

themafia wrote: post #210
xnx wrote: post #206

The best outcome would be the cancellation of manned moon missions. The original space race was a pissing match between the US and USSR. I would've hoped we had matured past that.

Which would be a salient point if _nothing_ of value came out of the space program. That's about as far from reality as you can get. The primary, chartered, goal of NASA is to create a commercial space industry. Ignoring this is a sign of extreme immaturity.

Space exploration is great, but manned missions are dictated by vanity and congressional pork more than scientific needs.

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

#235

Post by imtringued »

dotnet00 wrote: post #60
loourr wrote: post #20

Artemis is a joke. You can tell this is politically motivated by their stance on SLS. If they were serious they would give Spacex the SLS contract for being years and years behind schedule.

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…

They should give the rights to Starliner IP to Blue Origin so the US can have a legitimate backup to the dragon capsule.

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

#236

Post by albumen »

imtringued wrote: post #228
cladopa wrote: post #224

Oh yeah. Replace the stainless steel by carbon fibre, give it to your pals of Boing and instead of being ready in 2030 for 2.3 billion it will be ready in 2050 for 50 billion. Much better for making your friends rich.

Isn't Rocket Lab doing carbon fibre rockets?

Carbon fibre second stages that melt/burn up on re-entry.

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

#237

Post by WalterBright »

bahmboo wrote: post #227

"The president and I want to get to the moon in this president's term" - Sean Duffy NASA administrator. A scary way to set a schedule on a complex project with lives at stake. They don't care though.

Having a deadline is how things get done. With no deadline, nothing gets accomplished.

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

#239

Post by notahacker »

WalterBright wrote: post #237
bahmboo wrote: post #227

"The president and I want to get to the moon in this president's term" - Sean Duffy NASA administrator. A scary way to set a schedule on a complex project with lives at stake. They don't care though.

Having a deadline is how things get done. With no deadline, nothing gets accomplished.

The (aero)space industry tends to do rather well out of it being acceptable to miss deadlines though...

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

#240

Post by mmooss »

random3 wrote: post #168
namlem wrote: post #166

This would be such a dumb move on the government's part. "Lose the new space race" is ridiculous PR-brain. We are not racing to the same goal! China is trying to land on the moon, we are trying to establish a permanent presence. There is no value to merely returning to the moon to say we did it, and Starship is the only vehicle that can plausibly deliver huge quantities of cargo to the lunar surface.

What’s the main motivation for the moon? Is it a better location than the international space station? What’s the reasoning there?

A stepping stone to Mars, iiuc. Look up NASA's cislunar plans, oriented around developing the many new technologies needed for humans visiting Mars.
Post reply on HN