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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

#951

Post by ramblenode »

paganel wrote: post #491
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…

> 1. We’ve already beaten China to the moon by 56 years, 3 months, and some change. And counting. The Portuguese used to have the best sea-worthy ships throughout the 1400s. They were soon followed by the Spanish. It didn't matter, because by the 1600s the Dutch, and then the English, had transformed the world's big seas and oceans into their playground. In other words, if you don't use it you lose it, and right now…

The British won out over the Spanish because they realized they didn't need enormous warships to win naval battles. The Spanish weren't ignoring the need for a navy--they miscalculated and misallocated resources.

The irony is that the commenters saying we must go back to the moon are more like the Spanish: sticking to a sentimental 1960s vision of human-based space exploration despite evidence clearly favoring robotics and remote control.

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

#952

Post by ramblenode »

postingawayonhn wrote: post #709
imoverclocked wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a vastly oversimplified take; Mars will be a monumental effort, far beyond what it takes to get to/from the moon.

You'll need to launch more mass to get there but the technology isn't really any more complicated. It's also a more hospitable environment (reasonable gravity, day/night cycle, some atmosphere, water, etc.)

It's a significant feat to even get a robot safely to Mars. We've never gotten one back to earth. I think you are underestimating the complexity.

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

#953

Post by cubefox »

mortarion wrote: post #843
floating-io wrote: post #84

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…

> Refueling is done in LEO. Look up how many refueling launches are required and you'll see the problem, especially because no matter if Elon says so, the upper stage will never be reusable, even if caught. Every moon mission will require that they pre-build a HLS and probably 15 full stacks. Ridiculous.

> Look up how many refueling launches are required and you'll see the problem, especially because no matter if Elon says so, the upper stage will never be reusable, even if caught.

The Space Shuttle was reusable, and SpaceX is using an improved variant of the Space Shuttle heat shield, so it seems quite certain that Starship will be reusable. The question is more: how much refurbishment will it need? The Space Shuttle required extensive amounts. SpaceX will likely be able to improve on that a lot, though it isn't clear how long it will take.

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

#954

Post by ramblenode »

WalterBright wrote: post #515
05 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play devil's advocate, the only purpose astronauts serve is PR. Anything that can be done is space could be done cheaper and better with automation/rovers. So it seems that having those astronauts risk their lives for a short term political win is just table stakes, because the alternative for them is to stay on Earth and maybe pay $100K for just an hour in orbit with any of the commercial space tourism companies.

Automation still cannot pick a strawberry.

I bet it could be done if even a fraction of the Artemis budget were devoted to it.

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

#955

Post by Buttons840 »

renewiltord wrote: post #933
Buttons840 wrote: post #906

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They laugh at his jokes, and then sit deadly silent when asked "we're going, right?" Does anyone expect were going to launch Artemis rockets over and over for decades? Aren't they extremely expensive?

Lol this is a rhetorical trick. A joke is expected in the middle of a speech. Audience responses to a question generally aren't. If you were speaking to all the mathematicians in the world and decided halfway through to say "What's the integral of e^x dx?" you'd likely get silence in response. "OMG most mathematicians don't know how to integrate e^x holy shit humanity is doomed".

He asked "what is this?" at some point, referring to a diagram, and someone immediately answers "a PID controller".

My claim remains that there are many who are working on Artemis that quietly believe it will not succeed. History will eventually reveal the truth about this; and yeah, I might be wrong, we will see.

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

#956

Post by qcnguy »

nothercastle wrote: post #711
rayiner wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expected that comment for J.P. Morgan, not rail… so upvote for you.

Rail pioneered modern financial scams. I say modern because before that there were similar schemes in other areas like trade expeditions but the historical and written records on those are less complete and recent

The South Sea Bubble would like a word.

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

#957

Post by renewiltord »

Buttons840 wrote: post #955
renewiltord wrote: post #933

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol this is a rhetorical trick. A joke is expected in the middle of a speech. Audience responses to a question generally aren't. If you were speaking to all the mathematicians in the world and decided halfway through to say "What's the integral of e^x dx?" you'd likely get silence in response. "OMG most mathematicians don't know how to integrate e^x holy shit humanity is doomed".

He asked "what is this?" at some point, referring to a diagram, and someone immediately answers "a PID controller". My claim remains that there are many who are working on Artemis that quietly believe it will not succeed. History will eventually reveal the truth about this; and yeah, I might be wrong, we will see.

I searched the transcript for "we're going, right?" and stopped it at the first section (here I rewound a little for you) https://youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU?t=1270

I'll address this to the third parties in the room who are not me or you: Click through and listen and if you are convinced it's a question you can go with Buttons840. If you're not convinced it's a question you can go with me. But it'll take you 10 seconds max. Worth it for you to see it yourself. No need to let anyone convince you.

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

#958

Post by nxor »

underlipton wrote: post #922
nxor wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the protections get abused. See college admissions.

Legacy admissions.

Racial quotas pertain to all people of a group. Legacies pertain to a select amount of people of a group. If a black kid in the heart of Chicago attends a bad elementary school, bad middle school, and bad high school, then the system that failed them is that one, not universities that ideally should measure people by their abilities. Disclaimer: I also dislike legacies.

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

#959

Post by yifanl »

konart wrote: post #817
zdragnar wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America cannot possibly win the space race again, because it has already been won. The first to get there has already happened. The idea that we need to land on the moon once a generation just to say that we are as good at landing on the moon as our parents is absurd.

>America cannot possibly win the space race again, because it has already been won. How so? Because you decided that reaching the Moon equals winning? Why not Mars? Same way we can say that USSR won the race because they were the first ones to put man into space and bring him back. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy_H2BeE_Nk Neil deGrasse Tyson on topic.

The USSR did win the space race, but by demanding another spin double or nothing, JFK managed to annul that result with his literal moonshot bet.

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

#960

Post by qcnguy »

snapcaster wrote: post #950
mathw wrote: post #812

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Really? I've seen the opposite. They get way too many props for it given that the main reason China was so poor to begin with was their own cultural history. You shouldn't get credit for solving a problem you created for yourselves.
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