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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

#941

Post by ActorNightly »

ricardobeat wrote: post #934
mortarion wrote: post #837

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They haven't gotten anything done in regards to HLS. They can build their HLS and even launch it into orbit next year but then what? HLS requires on-orbit refueling. Anything from 10 to 20 refueling launches will be required. Did you think it required one refueling launch? The SH+SS stack will never be reusable or reliable enough to accomplish the refueling operation in time and on budget. This means one moon mission…

> HLS requires on-orbit refueling. Anything from 10 to 20 refueling launches will be required. Did you think it required one refueling launch? The SH+SS stack will never be reusable or reliable enough to accomplish the refueling operation in time and on budget. >This means one moon mission will require the use of 10 launch pads The refueling ships are to be launched weeks/months in advance, one at a time. If you look…

Yeah and how many refuelings have they done yet?

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

#942

Post by ActorNightly »

boxed wrote: post #772
llbeansandrice wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Unpopular” is a weird way to frame “is a Nazi”.

I mean.. Werner von Braun wasn't just "sort of a Nazi if you squint real hard", but an ACTUAL Nazi. At some point you need to focus on getting the job done, and not on purity tests and struggle sessions. THAT is why the US once got to the moon, while China starved 40 million of its own people, and the Soviet Union collapsed.

There is a difference between being an engineer, and being useful despite your shit views, versus being what Musk is currently.

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

#943

Post by JumpCrisscross »

dboreham wrote: post #705
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #627

None of this is real. Duffy and Isaacman are fighting to be head of NASA. This is that fight spilling from Washington over the weekend onto Twitter today because of course it has with this administration. Duffy, as acting head of NASA, is trying to lob a threat at Musk, Isaacman’s patron. He’s done so poorly, and so here we are.

In what way is Musk Isaacman's patron? He's a billionaire on his own.

> In what way is Musk Isaacman's patron? He's a billionaire on his own

But politically impotent. Isaacman was Musk's man at NASA. His nomination came up because of Musk. It was annulled because of Musk.

The question seems to be coming back up due to Isaacman's work. But because Isaacman is Musk's client, it's risen back to Musk and Duffy trading insults on Twitter. (Which, to be clear, is an elevation Duffy--purposely or inadvertently--caused.)

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

#944

Post by jjk166 »

jve wrote: post #854
jjk166 wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stainless steel was a questionable choice for starship. If the pros outweigh the cons, which is yet to be seen, it will be mostly due to the peculiarities of Starship's other design choices. In general it's a terrible choice for rockets. I'm not saying Boeing would do a better job, but any actual engineer doing a ground up redesign starting today would definitely go with carbon fiber.

> but any actual engineer doing a ground up redesign starting today would definitely go with carbon fiber. You seem like commenting on a situation as one would comment about a moon visuals by looking at it without a telescope. But maybe I'm wrong and you are very close to SpaceX engineers and know some folks that work there or other internals... But you should then have known that Tesla/SpaceX is very well known to r…

> But you should then have known that Tesla/SpaceX is very well known to remove stupid requirements or solutions if there is much better alternative. And they don't leave stupid decisions there.

I've worked directly with both SpaceX and Tesla; this is patently false. Tesla's worse than SpaceX but both are terrible at removing stupid and obsolete requirements.

> I'm no engineer, so I don't know.

I am an engineer. Starship's "durability" is neither particularly technically impressive, nor evidence that stainless steel was a good, nonetheless optimal, material choice.

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

#945

Post by rzerowan »

Hmm , considering theres some other piece of news out there stating "Trump administration considering eliminating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)" [0] , makes this look like a turf war between the two . Gov entity vs billionaire cotractor looking to clean up on the contracts, with the previously proposed budget already gutting NASA capabilities making it more or less a foregone conclusion that US space will be dominated by private interests. With the expected outlook of funneling tax dollars to private corps , this looks like each entity staking out their claims and playing hardball for their future roles.

[0] https://x.com/NewsWire_US/status/1980679333002764602

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

#946

Post by WalterBright »

05 wrote: post #842
WalterBright wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automation still cannot pick a strawberry.

It can't cost effectively pick a strawberry when compared to underpaid workers. It can definitely pick a strawberry cheaper when you take cost of lifting oxygen up from a gravity well into account. And with Moon 'ping' time of 2.6 seconds RTT, direct teleoperation is always an option.

Cost effectiveness matters, even when cost is no object.

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

#947

Post by ramblenode »

elzbardico wrote: post #886
ramblenode wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your example does not support your argument. Unlike heart surgery, there hasn't been a major shift in what we could do if we went back, and more exploration probably won't change the commercial or military prospects of the moon.

No. Of course, there is a giant shift in what we could do. We can build far more reliable rockets. We have incredible progresses in materials science, in our understanding of the moon's geology. Likewise, we established the presence of water. We have more advanced solar panels, better batteries, we have a lot of recent research on modular, safe nuclear reactors that could probably lead more easily to moon-ready react…

So what would the actual mission be if we went back, taking into account all these advances? Gather more rocks? Build a permanent base to... gather more rocks?

I love space exploration too, but its expensive, and we should focus on areas that have the best scientific or economic payoff. Sending humans back to the moon just isn't the best use of resources.

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

#949

Post by harimau777 »

nxor wrote: post #563
harimau777 wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> so much of society Much of society agrees with his points on crime

I don't think that matters. There's still roughly half of society that doesn't. Meanwhile NASA has something like a 90% approval rating.

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

#950

Post by snapcaster »

mathw wrote: post #812
pmontra wrote: post #799

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like the Olympics, you have to win the basketball gold medal every 4 years or accept that somebody else is better than you at that game. Every medal can be the last one forever. Sports are sports, not being good at other matters can have substantial consequences. Maybe landing on the moon is not one of them but the degree of technology and organization that it requires is certainly a proxy of the general standin…

True, however if you want to be great on the world stage and have people look at you and say "wow they can do amazing things" I'm not sure landing on the moon really has much value. The obsession with beating China there this generation is certainly not very healthy, especially when it's built on a moon landing system that was primarily designed to keep space shuttle contractors in business. Want to impress the world…

>Want to impress the world? End poverty.

China didn't _end_ poverty but they did lift hundreds of millions of people out of it and i've literally never seen anyone outside of China give them props for it

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