Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 1001 posts

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

#121

Post by Cthulhu_ »

destitude wrote: post #87
sofixa wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Starships will drop the cost to other bodies Assuming SpaceX can deliver it. They've failed to do a successful test flight with even a fraction of the officially planned capacity. Who knows how long it will take them, if they can even pull it off, to deliver it.

They could have delivered today if they weren't concerned about reusability.

Could they? The Apollo program took 9 years from conception to landing the first person on the moon, and cost $257 billion adjusted for 2020 dollars ($25.4B at the time). For comparison, the Artemis program was budgeted for $86B [0], with less to spend due to NASA budget cuts. The SpaceX Artemis contract is "only" worth $2.9B. Finally, the Starship program has cost an estimated $5-8B so far [1].

Some conclusions / opinions: Starship so far is relatively cheap compared to the previous program that took Americans to the moon. Developing a moon capable rocket takes a long time, especially if they don't just copy the existing designs from 60 years ago. And a single purpose rocket will long-term be more expensive than a more generalised / reusable platform, but that's more capitalist objectives than political (e.g. beating the commies).

[0] https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/nasa-ig-artemis-will-cost...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship

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

#122

Post by Arainach »

loourr wrote: post #20

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.

You don't want to rely on a single supplier for critical infrastructure. Their management can extort you, their failures leave you with no backup plan, if they go bankrupt you're really screwed.

Keeping multiple companies capable of building it alive is essential.

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

#123

Post by ekjhgkejhgk »

delichon wrote: post #77
ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you're being sarcastic. Have they managed to get starship to orbit yet?

> Not sure if you're being sarcastic. Have they managed to get to orbit anything bigger than a banana? Yes, about 4,000 metric tons. My IP packets are traveling through part of it now.

On starship?

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

#124

Post by Culonavirus »

freedomben wrote: post #63
dzonga wrote: post #29

[flagged]

Yes I remember (I worked in that industry), but a few important caveats that you haven't mentioned: * The cost was exorbitant * The delivery estimates were hugely long and massively padded * The precision was ensured through QA and acceptance testing processes that would easily be 10x the amount of cost/effort as the actual development was * The amount of waste around the programs was incredible

Also add to that cost the cost of human lives that were expendable on the altar of the cutting edge of technology. The entire Apollo and Shuttle programs were a complete shit show when it comes to the safety of the crews. The acceptable safety margins are not even remotely comparable to today.

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

#125

Post by dotnet00 »

chasd00 wrote: post #67
dotnet00 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're by far the ones with the most relevant experience and actually flying hardware (human spaceflight, propulsive landing, flight testing hardware for HLS), in the US. I don't think it's going to take them a decade, but they probably won't be ready within Trump's term, and I think that's the real reason for this latest push.

when the Democrats wrestle back control of the federal government all things related to Trump, no matter how tangentially, are getting castrated. That includes SpaceX because of Elon Musk so they need to get it while the getting's good. edit: the vindictive behavior of the current crop of politicians is just cutting off your nose to spite your face. All of it is going to come right back around when the parties swap p…

I don't expect democrats to be super vindictive to SpaceX, except if they think they can redirect that money to old-space companies like Boeing (which is less about being vindictive and more that most politicians are shamelessly corrupt).

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

#126

Post by reactordev »

inglor_cz wrote: post #56
altcognito wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Not even" only applies to those that haven't followed the events of the past decade. 1. USA is no longer sponsoring groundbreaking research 2. USA had already begun outsourcing research to companies that are not grounded in long term employment of researchers.

In general, yes, but in this specific instance, groundbreaking research or its lack isn't the core of the problem. This is mostly about the new human-rated lander, which is an engineering problem. Notably, the US never had a reasonably safe spaceship, although Dragon may yet prove good. Both Apollos and Space Shuttles, developed under NASA, were pretty dangerous to their crews.

As evident in Challenger and Columbia…

You’re absolutely right. Astronauts sign a last will and testament before every flight. We think it’s routine because we’ve nailed down orbital science but in reality, we lack the quality assurance that space flight demands. It’s one thing to send up robots and satellites, it’s another to send up humans. The ISS is crawling with bacteria. We lack the physical protection for long space travel for a mars mission much less visiting anything past the Kuiper belt.

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

#127

Post by danbruc »

radu_floricica wrote: post #102
saubeidl wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is assuming Starship succeeds. Elon's track record hasn't exactly been stellar as of late.

Except it kinda was stellar? When the test pad blew up I was absolutely sure we won't be seeing a V3 this year, but they recovered amazingly, with the last V2 test checking pretty much every goal they set for it.

But only if you are looking at the revised goals, if you look back at the original goals, things look different. It was supposed to fly around the moon with people on board two years ago.

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

#128

Post by Cthulhu_ »

trenchpilgrim wrote: post #110
chasd00 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Boeing or the military industrial complex would handle these things with precision and delivered ahead of time that's fantasy. I've never heard of either entity delivering on time or on budget let alone ahead of time.

A-4? F-117? B-21?

The A-4 from 1954? F-117 from 1981? B-21 that's been in development since 2015 and has had only 3 delivered so far? These are 10 year development program, the Starship still has some years to go and I'd argue a reusable moon rocket is a bit more involved than a bomber plane.

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

#129

Post by inglor_cz »

reactordev wrote: post #126
inglor_cz wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, yes, but in this specific instance, groundbreaking research or its lack isn't the core of the problem. This is mostly about the new human-rated lander, which is an engineering problem. Notably, the US never had a reasonably safe spaceship, although Dragon may yet prove good. Both Apollos and Space Shuttles, developed under NASA, were pretty dangerous to their crews.

As evident in Challenger and Columbia… You’re absolutely right. Astronauts sign a last will and testament before every flight. We think it’s routine because we’ve nailed down orbital science but in reality, we lack the quality assurance that space flight demands. It’s one thing to send up robots and satellites, it’s another to send up humans. The ISS is crawling with bacteria. We lack the physical protection for long…

Plus Grissom, White and Chaffee didn't even have to fly before dying.

They suffocated/burned to death during a routine test, with Apollo 1 cabine being still firmly attached to Earth.

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

#130

Post by Culonavirus »

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #69
raverbashing wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah who is going to deliver faster and more reliable than SpaceX? Boeing? LM? Doubt

Not sure if you're being sarcastic. Have they managed to get starship to orbit yet?

Several times (if we keep disingenuous "wheeeel akchually" technical gotchas out of this). The fact that they keep safety in mind is a good thing. Any starship that got to space could have easily reached orbit, but it didn't because spacex cares more about NOT uncontrollably deorbiting a giant hunk of steel than impressing a "redditor" who doesn't understand how orbital mechanics work.
Post reply on HN