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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

#311

Post by AshleyGrant »

chrisco255 wrote: post #301
caconym_ wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2024 was never considered remotely realistic by anybody in the "industry"---it was a purely political deadline and the will/funding was not there to achieve it. Today (AFAIK) 2028 is considered quite aggressive, mostly due to the lack of progress on Starship, and the facts driving that conclusion are not any more amenable to change via political pressure than they were last time.

There is no reason to consider anytime frame beyond what NASA did it in in the 60s "unreasonable". They were still using slide rules for goodness sake. We've got now 50+ years of space flight experience under our belt. Bean counters make excuses. Put the right people in the right places and shit gets done.

Unless we're willing to expend resources on the level we did in the 60s then it is absolutely unreasonable. Computers instead of slide rules doesn't matter at all.

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

#312

Post by mikkupikku »

oceanplexian wrote: post #267
bahmboo wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a political deadline with no grounding in reality.

JFK proposed we go to the Moon in 1962. We did it in 1969, 7 years later.

They also killed three astronauts in the process and had to stop the program and reevaluate their whole approach to safety.

The risk of people dying is sometimes an acceptable risk. We accept it every time a firefighter goes into a burning building. Is a national vanity project like Moon missions worth the risk? Maybe then, when it was novel and inspirational, but now, when it's a retro throwback and the only reason we're doing it is to avoid losing face to the communist Chinese?

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

#313

Post by jm4 »

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.

The silver lining is that they are operating under the assumption that he will leave office at the conclusion of his term.

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

#314

Post by MarsIronPI »

tastyface wrote: post #306
echelon wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like that attitude has kept us on earth all this time. We let people do stupid shit and kill themselves all the time. Driving 80+ MPH, driving motorcycles, recreational drugs, alcohol, climbing Everest, etc. I think it's fine. If I were in the position, I'd sign up to do this. The moon is meaningful.

[flagged]

> The moon will be desecrated by Trump planting some gaudy gilded flag with his name on it.

Let's be serious, please. When has Trump ever stuck his name or face on anything nationally meaningful?

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

#315

Post by consumer451 »

albumen wrote: post #236
imtringued wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Rocket Lab doing carbon fibre rockets?

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

Peter Beck says that "we like the black."

The tiny Electron is entirely carbon, isn't it?

Their new Neutron has a fully reusable first stage, also out of carbon fiber. For Neutron, they have the largest automated fiber placement machine known to exist:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/zmJdJIlPOr4

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

#316

Post by starik36 »

hermitcrab wrote: post #221
testing22321 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon just said starship will do the entire moon mission: “Starship will end up doing the whole Moon mission. Mark my words.” To address your question, what is the incentive for going to Mars

And he is super well known for making accurate predictions of the future.

Elon's predictions are usually very late, but they do happen. Falcon 9 landings, self driving vehicles, etc... Later than predicted, but they happened.

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

#317

Post by mikkupikku »

buellerbueller wrote: post #290
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.

I suspect the first people to sail the globe did so knowing the risks. I suspect if we reduced astronaut safety thresholds by a factor of 10, we will still have a surplus of high quality candidates for space missions.

I am sure the astronauts know and accept the risks, but does that really mean the public should be funding such reckless activities? They can go paragliding or base jumping on their own dime if they want an adrenaline rush.

The public has spend billions of dollars on this program, if the end result is astronauts getting cooked during reentry then how could that possibly be an outcome worth the expense?

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

#318

Post by rurp »

testing22321 wrote: post #214
ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Elon just said starship will do the entire moon mission: “Starship will end up doing the whole Moon mission. Mark my words.” To address your question, what is the incentive for going to Mars

The incentive to talk about going to Mars is that it's great propaganda for nerds. It gets people interested in the company and willing to work hard for below market pay. Actually going to Mars doesn't make any sense in the foreseeable future. The idea that we're going to setup a colony on the planet in a few years is a fun fantasy, not a serious plan.

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

#320

Post by caconym_ »

chrisco255 wrote: post #301
caconym_ wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2024 was never considered remotely realistic by anybody in the "industry"---it was a purely political deadline and the will/funding was not there to achieve it. Today (AFAIK) 2028 is considered quite aggressive, mostly due to the lack of progress on Starship, and the facts driving that conclusion are not any more amenable to change via political pressure than they were last time.

There is no reason to consider anytime frame beyond what NASA did it in in the 60s "unreasonable". They were still using slide rules for goodness sake. We've got now 50+ years of space flight experience under our belt. Bean counters make excuses. Put the right people in the right places and shit gets done.

Apollo was funded at a much higher fraction of the national budget, and I believe in inflation-adjusted dollars the cost is comparable but generally higher depending on how you measure it.

Funding makes it happen. Fund it, it will happen. Don't fund it, it won't happen. American space exploration has been chronically underfunded relative to its ambitions, which is why all we have to show for our manned exploration programs since STS (edit: or including it, if you like!) is a string of broken promises. I am hopeful that Artemis will get there, but I am simply telling you the shape of reality as it currently exists—a shape that doesn't care about your definition of "reasonable" in this context. I also don't think we will beat the Chinese unless something major changes.

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