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NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

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

#521

Post by whtrbt »

Waterluvian wrote: post #442
allenrb wrote: post #373

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…

Re: 1. I think the America of Theseus mindset is a bit troubling. A lot of people like to identify with achievements that they played no role in. Based on zero expertise whatsoever, I have a sense that this is a bit self defeating. To be born a winner, to be taught you’re a winner… how can that be healthy? Today’s America scores zero points for its accomplishments of the past. But I think one way it can be a good thi…

_America of Theseus_ is a great shorthand for what you're describing. Did you just come up with it then?

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

#522

Post by decimalenough »

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's stated goal is to get people on the moon by 2030. This may slip by a year or two, but probably not much more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Prog...

The main hurdle is the CZ-10 rocket, which has not flown yet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_March_10

But they have plenty of rocketry experience and the YF-100K engine they'll use for CZ-10 has successfully flown on the CZ-12:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_March_12

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YF-100

(Yes, Chinese rocket numbering is weird, and CZ = Changzheng = Long March)

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

#523

Post by WalterBright »

jjk166 wrote: post #413
phkahler wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, he wanted to go to the moon before the end of the decade. They made it within that time.

Which is kind of the key point - Kennedy's deadline was a realistic one based on the technical difficulty of the challenge.

It was never realistic. It turned out be possible, though.

Also, corners were cut in the testing. (Full stack testing.)

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

#524

Post by monooso »

gpt5 wrote: post #493
timschmidt wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of those were SpaceX

Exactly. The US private space industry is thriving and profitable. That's exactly what makes it so efficient and dominant.

Genuine question, is it profitable because of government contracts?

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

#525

Post by getpokedagain »

testing22321 wrote: post #440
dfee wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not at all convinced the US can build anything anymore. But it has! Look at all of our private industry! That's the point! > We don't have titans of industry anymore. What?!

SpaceX and to a much lesser extent Tesla are good examples. Excluding those for a minute, what else does the US have world-leading manufacturing of? Semiconductors? Nope. High speed rail? Nope. Auto industry? Nope. Major infrastructure projects like bridges, tunnels, airports, etc? Nope. Electronics (phones/laptops/etc)? Nope. ????? The US is not exactly a manufacturing powerhouse.

Teslas are built like shit compared to other cars.

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

#526

Post by boston_clone »

UltraSane wrote: post #465
sigmoid10 wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Ain't gonna happen. It would actually trigger a civil war.

and what about him openly stating how he's considered declaring martial law to suspend elections?

an apt comparison I saw elsewhere is that the left side of the aisle is acting like the opposing team from Air Bud: "hey, a dog can't play basketball, it's against the rules!!" meanwhile, the dog is making shots over and over again.

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

#527

Post by harimau777 »

tw04 wrote: post #506
testing22321 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We’ve already beaten China to the moon by 56 years, 3 months, and some change. And counting Of course, but there a few things to consider. 1. This is a new race. The olympics happen every four years to see which nation is the current best. It seems it’s time to find out again. 2. The last time the US was dominant was 56 years ago. That’s three generations. Based on SLS and the comments here, it seems extremely unli…

>Based on SLS and the comments here, it seems extremely unlikely the US is still dominant. Literally every other nation is trying to catch up to Space-X and is nowhere close. An American company, based in American, primarily staffed by American engineers. I don't know by what measure you'd say that the US isn's still far, far ahead but I don't know of any other country currently re-using rockets dozens of times. What…

Personally, I think it matters whether its achieved by a private company versus by society. That's especially the case when the private company is so closely tied to someone who hates and alienates so much of society. I don't think that I could view a win for Musk as a win for anything that looks like my chunk of the US.

There's also the fact that part of NASA's mission is to share their knowledge with the public.

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

#528

Post by vlovich123 »

sobellian wrote: post #397
vlovich123 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 space program stalled because pouring national wealth into gigantic single-use rockets was unsustainable. They tried with Shuttle but the material science wasn't there yet (heck it might not be even now, it doesn't seem that they've really nailed down the heat shield on Starship yet).

> because pouring national wealth into gigantic single-use rockets was unsustainable

You mean what SpaceX does as a matter of course and proved you make it cheap just through scale and iteration?

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

#529

Post by harimau777 »

bluGill wrote: post #450
testing22321 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We’ve already beaten China to the moon by 56 years, 3 months, and some change. And counting Of course, but there a few things to consider. 1. This is a new race. The olympics happen every four years to see which nation is the current best. It seems it’s time to find out again. 2. The last time the US was dominant was 56 years ago. That’s three generations. Based on SLS and the comments here, it seems extremely unli…

What is the point of winning though? We could be doing other things in stead, and I'm going to submit that they are more valuable (you are of course welcome to disagree - this is an opinion). Personally I hope no human lands on the moon again. I like telling my parents they are so old humans walked on the moon in their lifetime (last human left the moon December 1972 - before I was born). There is no value in this st…

To me, a significant part of the value presented by space exploration is the way that it inspires society. I think that whatever else we would do instead would need to be equally inspiring. Honestly, I can't really think of something comparable.

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

#530

Post by panick21 »

mmooss wrote: post #280
logifail wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Ah, but SLS were the right kind of people. Allegedly. /s / SpaceX, less so. Allegedly. Doesn't that attitude, in reverse, describe most HN commenters every time SpaceX or SLS is mentioned?

I'm not sure what are talking about. I don't like giving contracts to SpaceX because they are the right kind of people, I like it because they tend to deliver faster and at less cost with something more modern and more future looking.

While on the contrary Boieng and friends try to use old tech they have in their archive to slap togetehr a minimal viable product to meet the requirment.

But the contract structure changes is not about giving contract to SpaceX only. Its about developing a space industry. And this has worked extremely well. Commercial cargo resulted in Falcon 9, Antares rockets. Antares team is now working with the Firefly startup for a next generation rocket. Clearly not as successful as Falcon, but without Falcon on the market it might have delivered differently.

It also produce Cargo Dragon and Cygnus. Both have seen a lot of further development since then and have all kinds of uses.

You can also look at CLIPS for moon landers, where some companies at small budgets have managed to build landers. And even those that weren't successful, training a lot of people on deep space probes.

If you comapre the explosion of the space industry since Commercial Cargo to the stgantion in the Shuttle/Constellation area you will see why many space fans are so in favor of the new model. And the amazing thing is, that a tiny fraction of the money was spent on the non-Shuttle/Constellation/SLS part.

In fact, I did the math and the total spend on just development of Constellation/SLS/Orion is going toward 200 billion $ over the last 25 years. And that is without actually delivering anything meaningful.

In comparison the complete development budget of Commercial Cargo was a few billion $ at most, and it has revolutionized the US space industry. The complete spend on all Commerical Cargo, Commercial Crew and Lunar development more like 20 billion $. And the impact is just hilariously larger.

Seems fairly obious what the way forward is, its just politically not feasable. As long as 50% of NASA discretionary budget is spent on ISS and Shuttle-derived stuff that will never be forward looking, you are playing the game with a hand tied behind your back and cement shoes.

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