391–400 of 1001 posts
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
The SpaceX approach requires a lot of launches, but they're already proven experts at that. They've launched something like 130 rockets this year alone. That's one every couple of days.
High launch cadence is not complexity for SpaceX. It's normal for them. After the first half dozen or so refuels, it will be second nature, just like delivering satellites with Falcon is.
And they are, in essence, developing a single craft for it, just with a few variations.
Blue's architecture requires three distinct vehicles. Each one has to be developed separately. Then we get to the launch; last I saw, here is the comparison:
SpaceX:
* Launch the Depot
* Launch N tankers to fill the depot (this is the tedium I mentioned).
* Launch the HLS to LEO
* Refill the HLS in LEO
* Send the HLS to NRHO
* Rendevous with Orion in NRHO and transfer people
* Land on and then return from the moon
* Rendevous with Orion in NRHO and transfer people back.
That's a fairly complex architecture, but let's compare that against the last I saw of Blue's [1]:
* Launch the Transporter to LEO
* Launch tankers and refill the Transporter
* Launch the Lander to LEO "dry"
* Fill the Lander from the Transporter
* Send Lander to NRHO
* Launch tankers and refill the Transporter
* Raise Transporter to "stairstep" orbit
* Launch tankers and refill the Transporter again
* Send the Transporter to NRHO
* Refill the Lander again in NRHO
* Rendezvous with Orion and transfer people
* Land on moon and return with people
* Rendezvous with Orion and transfer people back
That is far more complex than what SpaceX is proposing.
The number of tanker launches is really quite irrelevant for both in this context. It's less risky for SpaceX due to their extensive ops experience, but both will be fine there I think. That's just tedium for both of them.
The complexity comes in with the number of operations and precisely where BO is doing the refueling. I'm not terribly worried about the LEO ops; they'll manage those. The NRHO refuelling though? That one strikes me much riskier if only due to comms lag.
And the sheer number of steps in Blue's architecture seems crazy to me.
So no, I can't agree that Blue's architecture is in any way simpler. Quite the opposite, in fact.
[1] https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20250008728/downloads/25... :: the last slide in the set.
(edit: formatting)
"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.
America is becoming a silly place. Lumberjack appointed as a head of NASA for his loyalty.
He sleeps all night and he works all day.
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Crucially, not during his term (or his life, but that's irrelevant).
Also at the cost of a really stupendous amount of money.
I think the US is lacking the organization, culture, and on-a-mission mentality today, not money. I believe the money is the easiest part of the equation, the rest can't be faked or supplied at the click of a button. The US is no longer a serious nation hell-bent on accomplishing great/difficult things. Congress knows if they supply the $30 billion per year, what we'll get in the end is a broken program that won't achieve the set aims, and it'll just take 15 years at $40 billion per year instead, without a single Moon landing. They know full well how dysfunctional the US is, everybody is just acting when the cameras are on.
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What’s the main motivation for the moon? Is it a better location than the international space station? What’s the reasoning there?
The ISS served all political purposes it could, and microgavity research can be served by private entities these days. (Especially considering that a Starship has half the internal pressurized volume of the entire ISS, at approximately one thousandth the cost.) A permanent Moon base would allow research opportunities that private LEO stations can't: ISRU, low gravity research, the far side of the Moon offers unique o…
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>Don't be fooled by this pretense. MAGA republicans are already actively working towards getting him another term Yes, he's in such excellent health, I can definitely see him living (and non-comatose!) long enough for that.
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>NASA regresses so far that they are now unable to do anything by themselves... I keep running across this perception and I don't understand where it comes from. Overwhelmingly, like since the 1970s, NASA has not built anything per it's appropriations from congress. Their job is to 1) Define mission requirements and objectives, 2) Oversee contracts to execute those missions, 3) Test and verify elements of those syste…
You mean the 1970s as in Raegan when the space program stalled and became irrelevant and became mostly a way to funnel money to districts for certain congresspeople?
"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.
America is becoming a silly place. Lumberjack appointed as a head of NASA for his loyalty.
⁽"ᵀʰᵉ ʰᶦᵍʰᵉˢᵗ ᵛᶦʳᵗᵘᵉ ᶦˢ ˡᵒʸᵃˡᵗʸ"⁾
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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This is the trolling equivalent of "embrace, extend, extinguish." They are mocking the people who believe it by amplifying it, making Trump 2028 merch, etc.
There is just so much wrong with this from start to finish. Here are a few things, by no means inclusive: 1. We’ve already beaten China to the moon by 56 years, 3 months, and some change. And counting. 2. Nothing based around SLS is remotely serious. The cost and timeline of doing anything with it are unreasonable. It is an absolute dead-end. The SpaceX Super Heavy has been more capable arguably as early as the secon…