281–290 of 1001 posts
I can imagine SpaceX choosing to self-finance a mission to the moon and beat NASA at it.
I predict that NASA would find some pretense to block any such mission to the moon or Mars to avoid embarrassment.
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They have a pretty good chance, actually. They are almost done with the hard parts of the Starship.
> They are almost done with the hard parts of the Starship. That's what Musk wants you to believe. In reality, reusability was the Achilles heel of the space shuttle, due to the thermal insulator tiles that could be easily damaged during reentry, so they had to be rechecked rigorously before the next flight, and the damaged tiles replaced. We haven't seen any of that - so far only the booster was reused, somewhat, as…
In comparison Starship is covered by mostly identical tiles attached to hull welded from milimeters thick (internet data indicates something between 4 and 2 mm thick & often multiplied in important places) steel plate.
The steel hull has demonstrated surviving missing tiles just fine - and during earlier flight even multiple burn throughs on the flaps with bits falling off and even back then Starship completed simulated landing to the ocean (including the flip manuever and landing burn!).
So even if SpaceX does not perfect rapid reusability of Starship immediately, they would still have hands down the best orbital launcher in the world, with the option of populating new Starship hulls with reused engines, acuators and avionics for the time being.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_thermal_protecti...
Remind me why we need to get to the moon again?
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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.
One thing I don't understand about Musk and his Mars obsession is that he has had a rocket that can launch stuff to Mars for years now and he didn't even bother with the tiniest pilot project just for PR purposes. He is not sending rovers, satellites or living plants on a journey to Mars. Even if by some miracle Starship carries people to Mars, there won't be anything for them to do there. They'll be stuck in their S…
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They should just get an Apollo lander, maybe strap on some rockets from Nike Ajax missiles, buff it up a bit, maybe throw a shuttle windscreen on it too. Job done.
Too bad Orion can't get to Lunar Orbit to meet the lander.
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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.
"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.