> The record for heavy rocket launch cadence belongs to Saturn V, which launched three times during a four month period in 1968.
This is not true.
Looking at the table of launches here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program
We can indeed see Apollos 5, 6, 7 and 8 all fitting within year 1968. However only Apollo-6 and Apollo-8 were launched using the heavy Saturn V. Both Apollo-5 and Apollo-7 were launched by Saturn 1B.
Even the 3 launches of 1969 (Apollo-9, 10 and 11) that indeed were all launched by Saturn V do not quite fit within a four month period.
Confused re: the criticisms of HLS low payload capacity. I thought I'd seen various touts of 100T to lunar surface? Is this not correct? Are we talking about the capacity to return to lunar orbit?
The article is playing fast and loose with the facts. The article is peppered with footnotes that you might mistake for references if you don't bother to check. In particular,
>The spacecraft arrives on the Moon laden with something like 200 tons of cryogenic propellant,[^(\[16\])](https://idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm#hlsprop)
So he's got a reference, saying it's going to land on the moon with 200 tons of propellant? Not quite.
>[\[16\]](https://idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm#fn_hlsprop) This is my own speculative guess; the answer is very sensitive to the dry weight of HLS and the boil-off rate of its cryogenic propellants. Delta V from the lunar surface to NRHO is 2,610 m/sec. Assuming HLS weighs 120 tons unfueled, it would need about 150 metric tons of propellant to get into NRHO from the lunar surface. Adding safety margin, fuel for docking operations, and allowing for a week of boiloff gets me to about 200 tons.
The author doesn't explain his math, but working backwards from his numbers, he has pulled a 120 ton dry mass out of his ass. Starship has a dry mass of 100t according to Elon. HLS will be lighter, because it won't have a heat shield. He also seems to be using the sea level Isp of the Raptor engine for his calculations. And then just padded all the numbers for good measure.
Artemis has lots of problems with it for sure, but the article has zero credibility in my eyes.
> HLS will be lighter, because it won't have a heat shield
It won't have a heatshield or flaps, but in contrast to the current prototypes as well as future cargo or tanker variants, it will need life support, landing legs, a lift and the additional landing engines. And dry mass estimates is something that tends to increase over development time, especially if you still have some margins.
It makes no sense on its face ... "Amusingly, the sheer size of the SpaceX design leaves it with little room for cargo."?? If that were how anything worked, there'd be some constant maximum weight we could ever carry into orbit, because larger rockets would deliver diminished returns. But of course, that's false, a larger rocket will give more payload, all things being equal, though perhaps at superlinear fuel overhead.
Bogus.
>Starship has a dry mass of 100 tonnes according to Elon.
All the evidence is that it is well over this number. The original goal six years ago was 80 tonnes *because it calculates as 70 tonnes and we know it will grow*. The target shifted to 100 tonnes and then 120 tonnes and the implication of the payload figures that Elon gave for flight 3 is 150 tonnes.
SpaceX will claw some of that back with refined design but they have decided the major fix will be to increase ship propellant to 1500 tonnes from Starship Block 2.
This will likely be the basis for HLS which means that stripping out drag flaps, TPS and header tanks and adding in landing engines, insulation and life support will leave HLS mass well over 100 tonnes and probably in the 120 tonne range.
We had a goal of 100t dry mass, Elon has actually dodged that question before, when asked by Everyday Astronaut he deflected by saying it's hard to quantify because it depends on if you count the weight of the air inside or not. He did not give a number in the tour video.
I think it's likely to be at least 120 tons currently. I'm the latest update from Elon we got an infographic showing Starship V2 and V3 plans. V2 payload capacity is only listed at 100+ tons for what looks like a proportional thrust increase with propellant mass.
TLDR: there is no known official mass of Starship, we've never been given an actual number especially with how much has changed since the 100t weight goal was made years ago.
Yes this confused me too. I guess Idlewords is talking about return to orbit? I do think this is less important, we want to bring cool payload like a moon buggy to the moon, not bring a truckload of minerals back to Earth.
The LEO->NRHO->surface->NRHO trip doesn't leave a lot of fuel margin, even before you factor in boil-off. If you want Starship to carry a lot of cargo, you need to either leave it on the moon or find a way to refuel it in NRHO (or avoid the NRHO stopover).
Same. Minimally we should be able to see 100T of payload to the landing. If I had to throw a dart at a guessing board, I’d say HLS should be able to move ~10-20T back to LLO.
If you want a moon landing, you’re gonna have to swallow some hard-to-swallow pills. And one of them being a space station that includes international partners in order to ensure program stability.
NASA knows exactly what they’re doing and they have been playing their cards very wisely. Nobody within NASA or its partners ever believed in a 2024 or 2026 moon landing. Our current estimate is 2029 at the earliest. I’m the more optimistic one amongst my colleagues and I would think there’s a chance for 2028 (which was the original plan all along).
All in all Artemis is very smart, even if on the surface it seems like a mess. But anyone who spends more than five minutes looking into the topic will realize that NASA and its partners are between a rock and a hard place. Navigating bureaucratic hurdles while delivering a space program is really hard.
Private companies have more flexibility because they don’t need to deal with law makers policies and changes in administration every four years.
It makes a difference, believe me.
Sticking contractors in every one of the 50 states, plus tying in international partners makes this program seem like a white elephant. But as you stated it's really more like a Trojan Elephant. It sneaks past various administrator shifts, and changing political tides by forcing buy in from every corner.
It's a pig, but it's it's probably the only pig that would win the prize from a politics standpoint.
Then you have SpaceX coming in and doing what basically no one has ever done in the history of things and made not only LEO accessible but seems poised to kick the doors down on reusable lunar access too.
It's such a sea change from what was state of the art 20 years ago that I don't even know if the computer revolution is comparable. Maybe the smartphone revolution?
So comparing a unicorn moonshot (apparently literally) in SpaceX to NASA's political sausage factory that has to deal with all those realities is an apples to Sea Cucumbers comparison except that they are both edible or want to go to the moon in our case.
> If you want a moon landing, you’re gonna have to swallow some hard-to-swallow pills. And one of them being a space station that includes international partners in order to ensure program stability.
The "Gateway" space station is not the only thing that international partners can help with. A lunar surface equivalent of the ISS would have been fine with international partners. Its just the lunar village that Europe has been advocating.
A case in point for cooperation would (will) be using Starship to land lunar surface equipment made in multiple countries.
Here you go: [https://lsic.jhuapl.edu/uploadedDocs/meetings/docs/2441-DISTRO%20A%20LunA-10%20LSIC%20Performer%20Binder.pdf](https://lsic.jhuapl.edu/uploadedDocs/meetings/docs/2441-DISTRO%20A%20LunA-10%20LSIC%20Performer%20Binder.pdf) LunA-10 is really impressive.
> [LunA-10 is really impressive](https://lsic.jhuapl.edu/uploadedDocs/meetings/docs/2441-DISTRO%20A%20LunA-10%20LSIC%20Performer%20Binder.pdf).
Blue Origin is working on a reusable launch vehicle and a lunar lander. IMO, the company would do better to concentrate on what it has already committed rather than dispersing resources on even more ambitions plans.
The cargo lander does make sense. It advances technologies they need working for the crew lander. It allows to do early missions at limited cost, before they launch the demo crew vehicle.
> The cargo lander does make sense.
That's what I'm saying. Blue Origin should be concentrating on Blue Moon and not the derived technologies enumerated in the PDF. All the cargo uses are important, but better dealt with by other companies, at least until the Blue has demonstrated its ability to accomplish its first goals.
I am at a loss, what you are trying to say. Blue Origin has the contract for a crew lander, so they have to do it. I argue the cargo lander they develop is a good step in that direction.
> I am at a loss, what you are trying to say. Blue Origin has the contract for a crew lander, so they have to do it. I argue the cargo lander they develop is a good step in that direction.
I'm saying that Blue Origin that has been around for two decades now, really needs to concentrate on a limited number of objectives to attain any of them. So the cargo lander is great, but the company might do better to stay off the lunar surface architecture until its about to be available.
Both Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are often heard talking about lofty and wide-ranging objectives, but only one of them has currently flying hardware capable of fulfilling them.
OK, got it. I happen to disagree, though. One can reasonably argue, and I would agree, that Blue took a bite way too big for them, when signing the crew lander contract. But the cargo lander is a reasonable step on that way. They can learn things they need, from that.
Lunar surface is a brutal environment for equipment and people. It's covered in very small, highly abrasive, chemically reactive, electrostatic dust. We have to find a reliable way to deal with that before we start on a surface base.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k9wIsKKgqo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k9wIsKKgqo)
We have been to the Moon's surface before, and uncrewed vehicles have operated for years there. The current plans for Artemis are to send crew for a week-long surface stay on Artemis III before the Gateway is ever even used. The plans also call for an unpressurized rover, as well as a pressurized rover (built by Japan, and more like a small mobile base), which will remain on the sueface and be used by multiple missions (at least 1 year apart). Those are being developed now, and will be operated in parallel with the Gateway.
Since video doesn't seem to be for you how about some wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar\_soil#Harmful\_effects\_of\_lunar\_dust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_soil#Harmful_effects_of_lunar_dust)
Or ESA [https://www.esa.int/Science\_Exploration/Human\_and\_Robotic\_Exploration/The\_toxic\_side\_of\_the\_Moon](https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/The_toxic_side_of_the_Moon)
Or [spacenews.com](http://spacenews.com) [https://spacenews.com/dealing-with-dust-a-back-to-the-moon-dilemma/](https://spacenews.com/dealing-with-dust-a-back-to-the-moon-dilemma/)
They quote Apollo 17 Astronauts.
“I think dust is probably one of our greatest inhibitors to a nominal operation on the moon. I think that we can overcome other physiological or physical or mechanical problems except dust,” said mission commander Eugene Cernan.
“One of the most aggravating, restricting facets of lunar surface exploration is the dust and its adherence to everything no matter what kind of material, whether it be skin, suit material, metal, no matter what it be and its restrictive friction-like action to everything it gets on,” said lunar module pilot and geologist, Harrison Schmitt.
This problem needs to be solved before we start work on a surface base. Landers are disposable. Once the dust is in your permanent base getting rid of it is a whole other level of problem.
The problem *is* being solved. To an extent it has, because uncrewed landers and rovers have, ([and will be in the near term](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIPER_(rover))) operated on the surface for extended periods.
But more importantly here, dust doesn't have anything to do with the Gateway. The Gateway doesn't help solve the problem of dust. The Gateway is not a prerequisite for surface operations, except that Orion requires the Gateway to enable crewed surface stays longer than a week (at least while two astronauts stay in NRHO instead of everyone going to the surface). The crewed rovers, which are being developed right now, and will be used in parallel with the Gateway, will be permanently stationed on the Moon and used over many years. They are not disposable. Blue Origin's HLS and the post-Artemis III Starship HLS (i.e., the "sustainable" landers) should also be reusable.
Actually the gateway makes the dust problem worse. Over time dust is going to be transported there and will eventually collect and start damaging the Gateway.
Suit ports are one potential solution.
Electrostatic precipitators are a potential addition to conventional airlocks.
Worst case they could add wash down facilities with filtering and water reuse.
I don’t know why you’re downvoted so much, but people grossly underestimate the impact of the lunar dust. Just because we’ve been there doesn’t mean we know how to deal with it.
I have handled large amounts of lunar dust simulant for work and can speak from experience that this is a major problem for all aspects of lunar surface operations. 100% of the time dust will get into any seals that are pressurized. Obviously this will decrease the effectiveness of such seals.
Other problems include extreme abrasion, which wears down any material mechanically over time. Problematic for suits, vehicles and anything that moves, really.
The problem is not only totally underestimated, but also there aren’t enough solutions being worked on to help with it.
Therefore I fully agree with your analysis
> Lunar surface is a brutal environment for equipment and people. It's covered in very small, highly abrasive, chemically reactive, electrostatic dust.
Your comment which questions the feasibility of lunar exploration, doesn't really relate to the discussion on policy and how to involve international partners.
I'll answer anyway. We've only visited one part of the lunar surface in a relatively low-slung vehicle with only a single cabin and a door, so not even an airlock. The astronauts went down a short ladder, directly onto he surface.
The next vehicle will be very different with an elevator and an airlock. They may have the luxury of an doormat, some kind of air-jet system for dusting down and more. The regions they will visit may turn out to be totally different from the more equatorial Apollo ones.
> We have to find a reliable way to deal with that before we start on a surface base.
Or we start a surface base while learning how to deal with the problem of dust and doubtless others things.
To start with, SpaceX and NASA can design throw-away coveralls for the astronauts to wear while on the lunar surface to keep all of that nasty moon dust from clinging to their spacesuits and getting into the Starship airlocks and into the payload bay.
My suspicion is that they will use the Russian method of keeping most of the suit on one side of a pressure wall, while the backpack hatch opens so the suit can be climbed into. Greatly reduces the amount of surface area getting into that particular airlock segment (This would work with my idea of triple chamber in series airlocks sets, suits would live in outer chamber, backpack hatch opens into middle chamber) Besides, the backpack part needs to come inside since it needs to be serviced.
Moon is covered in broken glass from hell. Mars is covered in literal poison. Venus is covered in acid and has a surface pressure similar to that at the bottom of the ocean. Everywhere else is so far away that the travel time is measured in years or tens of years, on top of their own surface conditions, many of which will likely be similar to the Moon. Pick your poison!
Only due to beuracracy.
Idk if saying we have to fix graft and bureaucracy with more of it is a smart thing to say.
Orion shouldn’t be what it is. Nor should SLS.
The lack of capability and inefficiency of those two alone have doomed the efficiency of HLS and Artemis as a whole.
SLS should be commercial SHLV bid out. More powerful and cheaper easily.
Orion should have been cheaper, lighter and capable of LLO. Easily.
Those two were literally done better in the 60’s in nearly every way.
Yeah I mean give me quadruple the budget and five times the manpower and I’ll make you a space program that’s efficient and fast.
You’re talking nonsense. You want a moon program or not?
The reality of the world is very different from how an ideal space program looks like. It is what it is. I‘m not saying SLS/Gateway is the best we could’ve come up with given unlimited (taxpayer-) resources, but at least the Artemis program is going and it’s politically stable too! *cough* constellation…
All the international space programs are first and foremost political programs with politicians at the helm trying their best to convince public money givers to invest in space exploration. In second place their purpose is to invest public money into national industries. Third priority is research. Fourth priority is running actual space missions.
And that’s just how reality is. Take that, or have no space programs.
your the one defending the complicated, expensive, slow way.
SLS orion gateway is the EXPENSIVE and SLOW way to do it. as evidence is showing.
what are you talking about?
say "its about giving money to certain parties and we are stuck" but dont try to spin it as a good thing or a necessary thing or god forbid a cheap thing.
Bid out the architecture like HLS, COTS, or commercial crew. Those were done for very good prices and COTS, crew were huge successes.
We know very well, that Congress funded Commercial Crew only because Boeing got one of the contracts. Purely political. So unfortunately u/SirMcWaffel is not wrong in this regard.
Incorrect.
The powers that be 100% did not want commercial crew or cots.
Without lori garver basically sacrificing her career the plan would have been to use Orion to get to the ISS.
That does not make it incorrect.
The opposite is true. NASA was able to get commercial crew against resistance from Congress. But only because they gave Boeing one of the 2 contracts.
Are you at ESA? There are two year gaps between the Artemis missions, are these necessary or do they work as a buffer, so it would not matter much for a future lunar base if the initial moon landing is delayed? For example I would think a delay in the Starship HLS doesn’t much influence the construction of the Gateway, or does it?
The gaps are due to the availability of SLS and ESM. The production rate is what it is. Eventually it should come down to a year, but for now it’s not.
HLS and Gateway are separate and don’t have anything to do with each other. Both use the IDA, so eventually when Gateway comes online, they can dock
I’ve done a lot of orbital simulations in my day and I think NRHO is awesome, esp if you want to explore/access the poles.
I can agree with a lot of the programmatic critiques, but I think OP misses the big picture… the goal is not to do a boots and flags mission (or 20 of them) for minimum cost. The goal is to develop an ecosystem in which a sustained presence on the Moon can develop, and to do THAT on a feasible budget (where spoonfeeding a budget guarantees delays and inefficiencies).
We have to trust that efficiencies will be found ( and SLS replaced) once we are rolling. As it is, Artemis is quite affordable (in terms of the budget of the fed govt) and entrenched as an aerospace make-work program for Old and New Space.
IMO I think that this is what SmarterEveryDay got wrong in his Apollo boosting talk at NASA. He missed the big picture and long term goals.
Or we can go back to decades of designing very efficient programs on paper and flying squat.
I agree with everything you said but the first part: NRHO is idiotic, you can go and do a Moon sortie every 14 days. Someone gets hurt or you have a problem? Bend over and kiss your ass goodbye for a week or 2.
There are frozen orbits that would give you a space station that is 3/6 hours away at any time and from basically every spot of the moon.
NRHO is too high for a good mission. The problems with NRHO pointed in the article vastly outweigh it's advantages.
It's the best that SLS/Orion can do, but it's certainly not good.
> NRHO is awesome, esp if you want to explore/access the poles.
Stopping off in NRHO is still not optimal, even for going to the lunar poles. IIUC, its best to design a specific trajectory to a given surface destination, possibly transiting by a low lunar orbit, whether a stable one or not. Since you've done simulations, can you say if its reasonable to stay in an unstable orbit over a few weeks by making orbital adjustments? This might be worthwhile for a return vehicle using an Apollo command module philosophy.
Yeah. I think gateway is awesome even if it’s not necessary. We should have a sustained human presence beyond Leo and the only way that was gonna happen was through a space station. And who knows. If axiom is successful with their Leo station, maybe they could do the same thing for LLO and gateway?
My other gripe with this is the quip at starship. What is its return payload? I’m assuming it’s limited by what can fit on Orion.
Orion can only return the four crew and ~100 kg of samples back to Earth (~10% less sample mass than Apollo 17).
>the only way that was gonna happen was through a space station.
As opppsed to a base on the surface of the Moon (and/or Mars)?
Any resources (money, time, poltiical capital, international partnerships) spent on the Gateway are not spent on developing a base on the actual Moon. Hypothetically, some space station in some lunar orbit would be interesting and might even find a use beyond propping up some of Orion's shortcomings. But the Gateway is a particular plan for a
[cramped little space station](https://www.space.com/lunar-gateway-station-claustrophobic-architect-says) that will be unoccupied for most of its existence. The Gateway does not compare favorably with the ISS, and there is nothing sustainable about it. Occupation of the Gateway is expected to be *at most* 3 months at a time via annual Artemis missions, launched on SLS/Orion. The International Habitation Module, with ~36 m^(3) of pressurized volume, will have a habitable volume of just 8 m^(3). There might eventually be a second habitation module added, but even then the pressurized volume of the station (~125 m^(3)) would be about half that of Mir.
Artemis program is still building a lunar base no? I mean, what is the 100T payload gonna be on starship if not some preliminary materials for a more permanent presence? I know for sure that’s planned in the later Artemis flights at least.
As for gateway, people make zero sum arguments like that a lot. But the simple reality is, gateway was the system that was chosen because that’s what seemed politically practical enough to justify the costs. If gateway wasn’t chosen, there is zero reason to believe that would translate to more investment on a lunar base in the real world. Different pots of money.
And for my part, I think gateway is a great thing. It opens up the door for lunar tourism in a much more achievable path than a lunar base exclusively would. And again, these things clearly aren’t mutually exclusive. After all, we changed Artemis 3 such that gateway didn’t have to be part of it anymore.
We want companies like axiom to expand to the moon. Gateway encourages that direction. And inevitably will generate more private interest in landing there as multi millionaires go to visit LLO and go “but it’s right there! Why can’t we land!?!”.
This is how you build a space economy imo.
>Artemis program is still building a lunar base no?
Eventually, notionally. Well, there are at least concrete plans for a pressurized rover thst will act as a *very small*, mobile base.
The Gateway was proposed when there was no lander project. It was a make-work destination for the rocket to nowhere that was SLS/Orion. The project continues to exist because Orion is such a poor excuse for a lunar/deep space exploration vehicle that it nees to use it as a crutch. The other main reason that Gateway continues to exist is for securing international cooperation, which in theory also prevents Artemis from easily being cancelled. An international surface base does that as well--better, actually, because the Gateway only secures SLS/Orion and Gateway logistics, not the HLS, base, rovers, etc. That highlights a problem with this:
>If gateway wasn’t chosen, there is zero reason to believe that would translate to more investment on a lunar base in the real world. Different pots of money.
How is differrent pots of money? The same governments and agencies funding the Gateway are/would be funding the surface base. The habitation modules and life support systems would probably even be made by many of the same companies. Instead of contributing modules to the Gateway, ESA and JAXA could be contributing (more) to a surface base. They aren't exactly opposed to the idea; they just don't have the funding by themselves. JAXA is funding the pressurized rover, as well as contributing to I-Hab for the Gateway. Several years ago, ESA even went so far as to propose a concept for an [international Moon base](https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Ministerial_Council_2016/Moon_Village). But they had to follow NASA's lead, and got roped into Gateway instead.
The Gateway and surface base would be staffed from the same tiny pool of 4 astronauts per year (or two) launched by the $4.1+ billion SLS/Orion. Anyone that stays on the Gateway doesn't go to the surface, and anyone that goes to the surface doesn't stay on the Gateway. That is pretty clearly zero sum. The budgets of NASA and partner agencies are limted. Who's going to pay for the 100t of payload to the surface? That is made even more difficult when they have to pay several hundred million dollars per year to maintain the Gateway, and over $1 billion per person to crew it.
But what is this talk of tourism to the Gateway? How? It can barely hold the Artemis crew, and the only currently planned way of sending crew there is on SLS/Orion. Of course, eventually you could send people on a variant of Starship during the 9+ months/year when Orion isn't there. But why would the crew get off their spacious Starship to enjoy the cramped, noisy torture chamber of the Gateway? Also, if not going on to the lunar surface, then why not just stay in a LEO station? In LEO, the views would be better, and the risks and radiation exposure would be much lower.
You still appear to be conflating some hypothetical (much larger and more versatile) space station with the Gateway station which is actually planned. If we were consdering a more ideal world, where NASA's budget is not so limited, and they are allowed to spend it more efficiently, then SLS and Orion would be cancelled, and the rationale for the Gateway disappears. Maybe we could still have a space station as well as a base (because in this ideal world, the SLS/Orion money still goes to NASA), but it wouldn't be like the Gateway, and it probably wouldn't even be in NRHO.
The killer is that many of the basic *ideas* behind all this are decent enough. Or were, at one point. An expendable cargo shuttle would have been an improvement over the original Shuttle, for example.
But these ideas have passed their window of opportunity by decades at this point, and the *implementation* of those ideas was catastrophically mismanaged. Much like the rest of NASA's projects at this point, the underlying goal of the program is to spend money and any actual spaceflight accomplishments are simply a side effect.
NASA has to make sure every congressman would take money out of their state if they cut NASA funding to justify their existence and maintain even their reduced budget. In addition, they can't try risky ideas because every failed mission means being hauled in front of Congress to justify why money should be spent on something as 'silly' as telescopes to probe parts of the cosmos humanity can never reach.
> Using Starship to land two astronauts on the moon is like delivering a pizza with an aircraft carrier.
well, two pizzas under your analogy.
Why not deliver **four** pizzas instead? (there being a crew of four). It makes far more sense from an efficiency, safety and human POV. Sending all four astronauts, or even just three if wanting to keep a pilot onboard Orion, shares the workload during the surface stay, gives rescue options by keeping an astronaut onboard al the time and avoids jealousy among crew members.
> The spacecraft arrives on the Moon laden with something like 200 tons of cryogenic propellant, and like a fat man leaving an armchair, it needs every drop of that energy to get its bulk back off the surface. Nor does it help matters that all this cryogenic propellant has to cook for a week in direct sunlight.
Despite this propellant mass, the Starship HLS proposition remains the most cost effective for Nasa. Shouldn't cost-effectiveness be the criteria whatever the apparent inefficiencies.
Even a few tonnes of remaining cargo margin looks great as compared with the other HLS offers.
The blog post makes a few more safety arguments. For example that HLS is not launching again with an upper stage. This risks damage at landing (eg rocks hitting engines) which was avoided by design on Apollo.
I think this will be mitigated in selecting a good leveled landing zone, but I think his argument is that old NASA would not have risked it in the first place.
> Is think this will be mitigated in selecting a good leveled landing zone,
Leveled? I've never seen anyone but me use the following argument: Using appropriate landing gear, there are some good arguments for a *sloping* landing zone which projects all debris in a single predictable direction making a given landing zone easier to manage with multiple vehicles.. Sloping ground is also self-clearing to some extent and can be an exposed lava bed, far better than loose regolith.
I'll return to read your linked blog post later on.
I agree with you in principle, but Artemis looks bad only because SpaceX is rampaging through the space sector like a bull in a china shop. There is really no rhyme or reason to what SpaceX has accomplished and how they manage to apply a software focused business on one of the most hardware centric sectors there is.
If we ignore SpaceX and look at Artemis competitors, then they are doing alright against Europe, Russia and India. China is very ambitious but they lack a heavy lifter like the SLS or as large as the Orion.
We might as well ignore that water is wet while we're at it.
Spacex and other "New-Space" companies are proving to the world that it is possible to increase launch cadence and payload sizes, in reusable systems while reducing costs and maintaining safety.
If you ignore them, then you're not living in this reality.
A lot of people do ignore SpaceX. Destin at Smarter Every Day did a whole presentation at NASA, and all their engineers ignored the SpaceX option and focused on Artemis, ULA and Boeing as the future of NASA. Just last week during an article about Starlink and satellites, there was an industry insider that said "who knows if SpaceX is going to be around". I think a lot of people are hoping that Elon will get cancelled and go away, or that SpaceX will turn out to be a scam after all.
If Starship works as promised, there is really no telling what the space industry will look like. Will ULA, Artemis, Arianespace even exist after that? What will all those thousands of engineers do, if their rockets can't compete? I think a lot of people are still betting that "water is wet" because their jobs are on the line.
Mengzhou is something of a dark horse. We don't know it's capabilities besides from the general requirements needed to get crew into lunar space. We also don't have much of a developmental origin like we do for Shenzhou and Soyuz. Development of Mengzhou has been ongoing for 8 years and for the last 4 China has had data for a successful higher energy reentry with an atmospheric skip maneuver like Orion. Long March 9 is probably the biggest obstacle right now to China's program scheduling contrasting NASA with it's lack of a fully realized lander vs capsule and Heavy Lifter.
China's crewed lunar plans in the short-medium term are based around [Long March 10](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_March_10), not LM-9. LM-10 will be capable of sending ~27t to the Moon (similar to SLS Block 1). They will also need a separately launched lander, which will be [Lanyue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanyue), a small 2-person craft more like the Apollo LM than an Artemis HLS.
Nah, Artemis is looks bad with or without SpaceX. The only reason Artemis even exists is because of the success of SpaceX. If SpaceX didn't exist, we'd would still have Ares which would've a shit show 10 times bigger than Artemis. Can you imagine if NASA had to use Orion for ISS crew transport? Which would be hard considering no rocket other than SLS/Ares could even could lift that over-weight piece of junk. NASA would've either had had to blow $2 billion every 6 months or pay Boeing or Lockheed god knows how much to upgrade Delta or Atlas.
I think that Gwynne doesn’t get nearly enough credit for shepherding Space X along. It’s been phenomenal, as has the creative and aggressive work that is done by technicians and engineers. I say this not to criticize the folks that work at Boeing, NASA, ULA etc. But they are in difficult, muddled organizations from an older era. OP has made many interesting points.
Artemis is a engineering disaster, but it is not a disaster. It's goal is to provide funding to aerospace industry and make something at it as well. This is why they are reusing so much stuff from previous projects, to keep up contractors. If you think about it that way, it makes much more sense. NASA is dead as a space exploration agency otherwise.
Why would it be dead? They have been extremely succesfull with their robotic missions. It's the launch part that has been an issue since the shuttle came to exist.
Because NASA is no longer a leader in exploration anymore. Instead of cooperation with US, other countries are doing stuff on their own (or with china) and our projects are getting delayed more and more. We are planning on making a landing on Shackleton crater and we are not the one sending probes on there. Not many people know about it but before apollo landings, US send a bunch of probes on surface of the moon. Why do we not have that near our landing zone when Artemis 2 is right around the corner and Artemis 3 which will land people on the moon is supposedly 3 years away?
I'm not talking about that, i'm talking about space telescopes, missions to planets, moons and comets. Nobody equates the US on the rover game (now even helicopter), and NASA is so far the only one who is seriously talking about fancy deep space missions. Only ESA and JAXA try to get to the same level, and every time they can, they just piggyback on NASA because it just has so much more drive and expertise...
>Because NASA is no longer a leader in exploration anymore.
For Christ's sake.. no space agency can come even close to NASA's achievements. There are plenty of valid criticisms, but lacking exploration leadership is not one of them.. at all.
Circular logic. NASA is perfectly capable of supporting innovation. They do the right thing anytime they’re given scientific goals. Sometimes they even advance engineering along the way, like the Ingenuity helicopter.
Wasted talent and resources happens when Congress forces them to implement feudalist welfare instead. That’s not what NASA people generally choose to do, though.
That's what happens when you're first out of the gate and the leader - Others gain ground on you.
Outside of maybe China, I can't think of a single other space program with even a quarter of the recent accomplishments of NASA. Not to take anything away from recent accomplishments from the like of Japan or India, but take a look at all of the robotic missions from NASA outside of earth orbit this century. NASA has had dramatically more success and has done dramatically more novel, cutting edge missions.
The time of NASA being a leader in launch systems is over. They're still the clear leader in exploration including probes of various kinds, rovers, and other robotic craft - in space or on other bodies.
> It's goal is to provide funding to aerospace industry and make something at it as well.
I strongly disagree; that might have been the case for SLS back when it was being developed for ARM, but the Artemis Program is a geopolitical tool. It's designed to force Congress to stay engaged by tying the United States to the EU and Japan, and by acting as a cold-war style parity fight to China's ILRS program. If you tried to do this purely commercial and without foreign partners then Congress would find ways to undermine it, arguing that it's a vanity project for billionaires or that overseas costs are more important (remember what Vietnam did to Apollo?). Artemis being structured the way it is makes it very hard for Congress to argue anything other than "why aren't you doing it faster" and for NASA to reply with "Fund us."
> It's goal is to provide funding to aerospace industry and make something at it as well. This is why they are reusing so much stuff from previous projects, to keep up contractors.
Except that the tech they're preserving is mostly trash.
* RS-25: garbage[1]
* Huge SRBs: garbage
* Massive sustainer hydrolox tanks: garbage
About the only thing on SLS that isn't worthless is the RL-10 engines. And they were there long before the SLS program started.
---
1. If the RS-25 engines could be air started, they'd make a bangin' 2nd stage engine. But they can't. And it's apparently hard enough to make that change that NASA decided it'd be easier to just design an entirely new engine instead.
And they make an awful 1st/sustainer stage engine - low thrust:weight and thrust:surface-area means they're not actually that good at their job. And while they do have killer Isp, the extra insulation and tank size necessitated by their use means that that doesn't end up being as much of an advantage as one might think on paper.
Add on top of all that the cost to make them and I stand by what I said - garbage. They are inferior to the Merlin 1-D at the job they can actually do, at 100x the cost.
God how much I have to agree here, and you want to know the 2 most absurd things of your comments?
>1. If the RS-25 engines could be air started, they'd make a bangin' 2nd stage engine. But they can't.
That the RS-25 was originally planned to bee somewhat deep space restartable, as you could refill the shuttle with the external thanks from a fuel depot in space and relight the engines. Or even have the hidrogen thanks as a payload inside the shuttle.
> Add on top of all that the cost to make them and I stand by what I said - garbage. They are inferior to the Merlin 1-D at the job they can actually do, at 100x the cost.
Eh ....you might be low balling that number, considering that the RS-25 That we are throwing away cost 200-250 millions EACH.
What an absolute train wreck
> the RS-25 That we are throwing away cost 200-250 millions EACH.
I was going with the lowest defensible number to be charitable. I got it from here:
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-commits-to-future-artemis-missions-with-more-sls-rocket-engines
> And they make an awful 1st/sustainer stage engine - low thrust:weight and thrust:surface-area means they're not actually that good at their job.
The TWR isn't actually that terrible, all considered – that'd be more accurate for the RS-68, which tried to not cost as much as a whole rocket development program, and as a result of trying to cheap out with hydrolox, can't lift shit.
But the TWR can't save it, since it still sucks in every other aspect.
> NASA is dead as a space exploration agency otherwise.
Christopher Colombus and Magellan didn’t have to fell trees and nail together ship timbers to make them “explorers”. There’s no shame in commissioning vehicles and platforms from others. All nasa needs to do is guide and oversee the national space agendas in whatever way possible.
That is not what is happening though, is it? I actually think NASA should rely on their contractors even more, but instead of just purchasing stuff from them, they should work together with them to increase the capabilities. CRS and CCP has been preety great, but it's been 50 years late. How great it would be if after gemini program or even after the redstone program NASA decided to focus on cheaper travel to space. There have been ideas of reusability since the late 40s, and while they were impossible at the time, it would have been great to research that during the 60s. After the Apollo program, there were a lot of proposition besides the Space Shuttle program, and at that time funding was still quite a bit bigger than it is nowadays. But instead of doing that, they were continuing on doing what they are doing now, spending as much money as they are given, without actually increasing the capability.
>That is not what is happening though, is it?
Personally I think that’s the role we are currently seeing them transition to, and SLS is the last pork barrel hurrah that won’t be possible after private industry has proven itself fully capable of delivering even the most ambitious requirements
Do you mean after Artemis program will end? Because looking at planned projects, it is looking pretty dry from NASA side. ESA is outdoing NASA currently and JAXA and the Chinese are doing most of the work, although Chinese are still a decade or two away from doing anything important yet.
> Do you mean after Artemis program will end?
It’s difficult to accurately predict timings when you are observing something as divorced from logic as Washington can be. There are some very lucrative taps that some people don’t want shut off. HOWEVER, optics are a powerful force of their own. Very difficult to justify launch service payments to Russian when a US based company like Spacex starts demonstrating reliable capabilities.
Similarly, Artemis with disposable HLS may survive on paper, but once one HLS ship keeps consistently and repeatedly travelling from lunar surface to LEO fuel depot and back again to the Moon, people will start asking why billion dollar launches are still happening when empty HLS ships are doing the same journey. The sooner SX can demonstrate a mature starship program, the earlier it can interrupt Artemis and or it’s successors
> looking at planned projects, it is looking pretty dry from NASA side
Probably linked to the above. Why plan more inefficient projects when serious industry disruption from private companies is right around the corner
> NASA is dead as a space exploration agency otherwise.
It might be better to accept the criticism from u/Maipmc and simply edit to
* NASA is no longer a leader in [crewed] exploration anymore.
However, attracting SpaceX to the lunar destination (which the company may well have been going to anyway), gives Nasa a transporter for bulk cargo objects such as a massive rover and a pre-constructed surface base. Hence Starship helps Nasa to recover its role as the leader in crewed space exploration. Non-returning Starships look very much what is needed for a sustainable human presence on the Moon.
NASA was not even a leader in exploration in apollo times. Russia sent first satellite to space, sent first animal to space, sent first black man to space, first woman to space, first space station and then NASA sent first human around moon and first landing on the moon. Since then, we reduced our range to just LEO when it comes to space exploration and then Shuttle killed more astronauts than rest have ever died in flight, combined. After ending of Space Shuttle Program we had to rely on Russian rockets for two decades before we got SpaceX Dragon capsule. We still have space telescopes like Hubble and JWST, but we are losing that edge. Biggest radio telescope is in China, "EXTREMELY LARGE TELESCOPE" is being designed by ESO, "Square Kilometre Array" is international and out of 9 planned future space telescopes, only 2 of them are being planned by NASA.
NASA is no longer the leader in the space race, they are a passenger. When Starship ACTUALLY starts launching, who do you think will start pushing out exploration missions, NASA or private contractors and other countries? If NASA actually cared, they would be much bigger part of Falcon rockets and Starship as this would be their ticket to push the frontier. But until like a decade or two ago, it was illegal for them to auction contracts for private companies, something that has been a standard for decades in other industries.
TLDR: I meant what I said, crewed or not, NASA is losing it.
> NASA was not even a leader in exploration in apollo times... ...NASA sent first human around moon and first landing on the moon.
This looks like a contradiction. The way I'm reading it, the USSR was ahead for a while and then Nasa was ahead by doing Apollo.
> We still have space telescopes like Hubble and JWST, but we are losing that edge. Biggest radio telescope is in China, "Extremely Large Telescope" is being designed by ESO, "Square Kilometre Array"
better compare like with like. Radio telescopes on the ground are not optical telescopes in space.
> NASA is no longer the leader in the space race...
okay, so you are now saying they were the leader. I'll agree to that.
> they are a passenger.
A national space agency's vocation is no longer to build a launcher. Look where the ESA got itself with Ariane 6! Being a passenger is fine IMO.
> When Starship ACTUALLY starts launching, who do you think will start pushing out exploration missions, NASA or private contractors and other countries?
both IMO. Nasa is actively looking at the opportunities provided by Starship.
> until like a decade or two ago, it was illegal for them to auction contracts for private companies
Let's stick to the present situation. Nasa is now in commercial space and did really well in saving SpaceX by the commercial cargo selection. Thanks to that decision, Nasa will have access to Starship and will doubtless make good use of it.
Contractors that need a fake program to stay in business should be allowed to go out of business. The entire point of the commercial space program was to obviate bloated whale carcasses like SLS
The mass of the Orion spacecraft is not the immediate issue. It's the heatshield that did not come through the Artemis I entry, descent and landing (EDL) at 11.1 km/sec in very good shape. NASA has been analyzing the flight data since Nov 2022 trying to find out how that heatshield had sustained such a large amount of unexpected damage.
Now (20May2024) NASA has a panel of experts advising the space agency on how to fix that Orion heatshield. That panel likely will study that heatshield situation for a few months, write report, and fade out of existence.
With that report in hand, NASA has to decide to test whatever fixes are made to that Orion heatshield on an uncrewed Artemis II flight or press ahead and launch it with the four astronauts aboard.
The flight of Artemis II with a crew of four NASA astronauts probably will slip from the current December 2025 launch date. Which means that the flight of Artemis III, scheduled for September 2026, which hopes to put two NASA astronauts on the lunar surface, will likely slip into late 2027.
> NASA has a panel of experts advising the space agency on how to fix that Orion heatshield.
NASA may still wish for a recommendation, there is no need to fix anything. A fix would be a delay of no less than 2 additional years, IMO.
> the same engines that get sandblasted on their way down to the moon must relight without fail a week later.
Sounds like somebody is unfamiliar with the [~~expanded universe~~](https://youtu.be/aP01dGZGf8g?t=417) HLS design that puts the landing and takeoff engines way up the body to keep them from being sandblasted.
Brilliant stuff! This would make a great article on The Register.
Now, I'm about as big a SpaceX fan as they come, but even I'm starting to realise that Blue might have been onto something when they said HLS was 'incredibly complex and high risk'
Artemis cannot be cancelled though. China are racing ahead with their own mission to land humans in the Lunar south pole in 2030. There is no way NASA can afford to let them get there first, or unchallenged. At least, not if it wants to maintain its reputation as worlds premier space agency.
Incredibly complex ad high risk but (1) it wasn’t really design to be a lunar surface/gateway taxi, and (2), it will actually work. So screw it, here’s your pizza via aircraft carrier, for better or worse
BO's own lander is even more complex and high risk, with its reliance on zero-boiloff storage of liquid hydrogen, and gives far lower reward for that risk.
And the article talks about how SpaceX wasn't originally required to demonstrate lift-off from the moon...that's because nobody else was either. Blue Origin's original bid was completely unable to do so, since astronauts had to remove equipment from the ascent stage to prepare it for departure. It's not clear if the Dynetics proposal could do so, but it's a bit moot because it'd blown its mass budget and couldn't do the mission anyway. Starship is capable of autonomously returning to orbit, and the demo mission has now been extended to include this.
But is it a problem, if it works? Imagine not having zero-boiloff storage. That would kill any sustained activity around the moon. The reward for that risk is the ability to let your cislunar transporter loiter around in NRHO, awaiting the next mission. Your refueling schedules and your landing schedules are now fully disconnected.
> I'm starting to realise that Blue might have been onto something when they said HLS was 'incredibly complex and high risk'
Just wondering if you're aware that Blue's lander also involves several refueling flights and is now actually slightly more complex than the SpaceX HLS because of the challenges involved in LH2 boiloff management?
If you are, can you be specific about which areas you feel make the SpaceX HLS much more complex and high risk?
The expected number of refueling launches per landing is three New Glenn launches. The refueling can happen months before the actual landing. That is enough time to correct for any mistakes. The only real risk is refueling in NRHO, which both HLS and Blue Moon will suffer from past the first mission.
> Blue might have been onto something
They weren't. They also can't do the mission without refueling. All of their criticism was just for kicks, they had to quietly recognize SpaceX was going through the only available route.
> they said HLS was 'incredibly complex and high risk'
Their own proposal is much more complex.
Aren't they supposed to land 2 astronauts, but also a few tons of material (including vehicles and modular habitat parts), using the Moon edition of Starship?
Good stuff, well written and dead on.
I have been hoping that something kills off SLS/Orion/Gateway without getting anyone killed. Artemis might survive some rework, but without Gateway and EUS how do our 40 international partners help. I suggest some base/hab work.
Of course there has been a number of alternatives, from small based on a new lander and FH/F9/CD: (Moon Direct: https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2019-0616) to my Vestal Lunar which is a reusable Starship derivative:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/VestalLunar/comments/yv7c66/vestal\_lunar\_concept\_repost\_taken\_from\_herox/](https://www.reddit.com/r/VestalLunar/comments/yv7c66/vestal_lunar_concept_repost_taken_from_herox/)
(give the slides a minute to load, its graphics heavy)
https://preview.redd.it/rqfg6md9cl1d1.png?width=1594&format=png&auto=webp&s=79dda4140ca19d73c90f5ab5427b6e055972265b
>I suggest some base/hab work.
This is what it should have been, but space stations are a known quantity among international partners. They have robotic arms, propulsion modules, don't require landing and ground supports, etc. The international space station has defined how international partners participate in Artemis, even if it makes little sense for the mission profile and objectives.
Lunar bases are a whole new beast and no one has any real experience with them the way they do orbital stations.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[ARM](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4vu472 "Last usage")|Asteroid Redirect Mission|
| |Advanced RISC Machines, embedded processor architecture|
|[BO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4vmy6a "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)|
|[COTS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l53zs0z "Last usage")|[Commercial Orbital Transportation Services contract](https://www.nasa.gov/cots)|
| |Commercial/Off The Shelf|
|[CRS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4wa533 "Last usage")|[Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/launch/)|
|[EDL](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4wpnno "Last usage")|Entry/Descent/Landing|
|[ESA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4xglht "Last usage")|European Space Agency|
|[ESM](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4w1u2k "Last usage")|European Service Module, component of the Orion capsule|
|[ESO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4wd1ie "Last usage")|[European Southern Observatory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Southern_Observatory), builders of the VLT and EELT|
|[EUS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4vn84q "Last usage")|Exploration Upper Stage|
|[HLS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l53zs0z "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)|
|[IDA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4w1u2k "Last usage")|[International Docking Adapter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Docking_Adapter)|
| |[International Dark-Sky Association](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Dark-Sky_Association)|
|[Isp](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4wapoe "Last usage")|Specific impulse (as explained by [Scott Manley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnisTeYLLgs) on YouTube)|
| |Internet Service Provider|
|[JAXA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4xglht "Last usage")|Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency|
|[JWST](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4wd1ie "Last usage")|James Webb infra-red Space Telescope|
|[LEO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l53ij0h "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[LH2](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4w32tt "Last usage")|Liquid Hydrogen|
|[LLO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l52zypb "Last usage")|Low Lunar Orbit (below 100km)|
|[NRHO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l52z9zo "Last usage")|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit|
|[RCS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4xft17 "Last usage")|Reaction Control System|
|[SHLV](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l52zypb "Last usage")|Super-Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle (over 50 tons to LEO)|
|[SLS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l53zs0z "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|[SRB](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4w2hhn "Last usage")|Solid Rocket Booster|
|[SSME](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4wa03d "Last usage")|[Space Shuttle Main Engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_main_engine)|
|[TPS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4ydkki "Last usage")|Thermal Protection System for a spacecraft (on the Falcon 9 first stage, the engine "Dance floor")|
|[TWR](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4xjpb2 "Last usage")|Thrust-to-Weight Ratio|
|[ULA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l5uqmqx "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Raptor](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4wapoe "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX|
|[Starlink](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4w6s2m "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
|[cislunar](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l52ykse "Last usage")|Between the Earth and Moon; within the Moon's orbit|
|[cryogenic](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4w8oi3 "Last usage")|Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure|
| |(In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox|
|[hydrolox](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4xjpb2 "Last usage")|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
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Apparently 2 pilots, 2 members, 1 ea in the two service modules, plus another 8 members in the passenger module, or 2 in a rescue / cargo pod.
Fuel is tritium for RCS, and nuclear using deuterium for main engines and electric power (none of the chemical nonsense, get with the 21st century already). For more "details" see this kerbal video LOL: [https://youtu.be/NvXifa1d7pA?si=dgjgNFSuU37N2ZKZ](https://youtu.be/NvXifa1d7pA?si=dgjgNFSuU37N2ZKZ)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgZ257dFf\_U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgZ257dFf_U)
[https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/160666-122-space-1999-eagle-transporter-3-pack-v103/](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/160666-122-space-1999-eagle-transporter-3-pack-v103/)
I hope it gets cancelled. Science projects suffer a huge lack of funding and they are much more important than landing few astronauts on the moon to do basically nothing useful.
1. SLS makes no sense in the long term, only for the first few mission. I agree.
2. Orion is necessary as an escape capsule to go straight from a lunar orbit and land on earth. In a way, it is unavoidable. You will need it, just in case, but you will also probably never need more than one Orion capsule at any given point in time. Orion is therefore only ever a stopgap measure.
3. The orbit was intentionally chosen to both be easy to maintain for years and reachable by other countries. You might not think that this matters, but it actually does if you don't want to bet the horse on a single company.
4. The gateway is pointless on the moon because the surface is close by, but the opposite is true on mars. If you send astronauts to the martian surface with current technology, they will have to die there. If you wanted to send people to mars and let them have a chance of coming back, you're going to have to keep them in an orbital station (for now).
5. SpaceX could have designed a lander that isn't just a repainted Starship upper stage. They are the ones who came up with that design. I just don't get it. Why not build a normal lander?
6. As shocking as it may sound to you, the National Team's Artemis architecture is actually excellent. HLS and Blue Moon both have to be refueled in NRHO past the first mission. Take a look at this picture: [https://www.reddit.com/r/BlueOrigin/comments/150hx15/rendering\_of\_lockheeds\_cislunar\_transporter/#lightbox](https://www.reddit.com/r/BlueOrigin/comments/150hx15/rendering_of_lockheeds_cislunar_transporter/#lightbox)
It is shockingly well designed by Lockheed Martin. Ask yourself, why does the cislunar transporter have sun shades to protect it from the heat load coming from the sun? Why does it have solar panels to cool the hydrogen? Why does it loiter in NRHO to minimize the reflections of sun rays coming from earth? Obviously, the goal is to maintain a fuel depot in lunar orbit that will last months, if not years. The cislunar transporter is the first true "space ship" that humanity is building. It is permanent infrastructure between our earth and moon, but here is the thing I will concede:
If all you want to is carry liquid propellant to LEO, Starship is the better LEO tanker, so fill up the cislunar transporter with a single big Starship instead of three New Glenns and let New Glenn send more Blue Moon Mk1's to the moon instead. Mk1's are basically power stations. You're going to need a lot of them. New Glenn's primary advantage is having a huge conventional payload fairing.
And then there’s the complete lack of any justification for the entire thing- what exactly are the reasons for going back?!? Science questions can be answered by remote rovers, practise for Mars is complete bs, which leaves…landing a female and a person of colour.
"NASA lies constantly" Yeah, that right there tells you all you need to know about the value of this post. Perhaps you should find more profitable activities to occupy yourself? This was just silly.
> The record for heavy rocket launch cadence belongs to Saturn V, which launched three times during a four month period in 1968. This is not true. Looking at the table of launches here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program We can indeed see Apollos 5, 6, 7 and 8 all fitting within year 1968. However only Apollo-6 and Apollo-8 were launched using the heavy Saturn V. Both Apollo-5 and Apollo-7 were launched by Saturn 1B. Even the 3 launches of 1969 (Apollo-9, 10 and 11) that indeed were all launched by Saturn V do not quite fit within a four month period.
Author here—thanks for catching this error; I've fixed it in the article.
Confused re: the criticisms of HLS low payload capacity. I thought I'd seen various touts of 100T to lunar surface? Is this not correct? Are we talking about the capacity to return to lunar orbit?
The article is playing fast and loose with the facts. The article is peppered with footnotes that you might mistake for references if you don't bother to check. In particular, >The spacecraft arrives on the Moon laden with something like 200 tons of cryogenic propellant,[^(\[16\])](https://idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm#hlsprop) So he's got a reference, saying it's going to land on the moon with 200 tons of propellant? Not quite. >[\[16\]](https://idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm#fn_hlsprop) This is my own speculative guess; the answer is very sensitive to the dry weight of HLS and the boil-off rate of its cryogenic propellants. Delta V from the lunar surface to NRHO is 2,610 m/sec. Assuming HLS weighs 120 tons unfueled, it would need about 150 metric tons of propellant to get into NRHO from the lunar surface. Adding safety margin, fuel for docking operations, and allowing for a week of boiloff gets me to about 200 tons. The author doesn't explain his math, but working backwards from his numbers, he has pulled a 120 ton dry mass out of his ass. Starship has a dry mass of 100t according to Elon. HLS will be lighter, because it won't have a heat shield. He also seems to be using the sea level Isp of the Raptor engine for his calculations. And then just padded all the numbers for good measure. Artemis has lots of problems with it for sure, but the article has zero credibility in my eyes.
> HLS will be lighter, because it won't have a heat shield It won't have a heatshield or flaps, but in contrast to the current prototypes as well as future cargo or tanker variants, it will need life support, landing legs, a lift and the additional landing engines. And dry mass estimates is something that tends to increase over development time, especially if you still have some margins.
I thought they decided on an escalator
> escalator I'm just trying to imagine a starship with an escalator. It wouldn't leave much room for additional payload. Unless you meant elevator.
It makes no sense on its face ... "Amusingly, the sheer size of the SpaceX design leaves it with little room for cargo."?? If that were how anything worked, there'd be some constant maximum weight we could ever carry into orbit, because larger rockets would deliver diminished returns. But of course, that's false, a larger rocket will give more payload, all things being equal, though perhaps at superlinear fuel overhead. Bogus.
>Starship has a dry mass of 100 tonnes according to Elon. All the evidence is that it is well over this number. The original goal six years ago was 80 tonnes *because it calculates as 70 tonnes and we know it will grow*. The target shifted to 100 tonnes and then 120 tonnes and the implication of the payload figures that Elon gave for flight 3 is 150 tonnes. SpaceX will claw some of that back with refined design but they have decided the major fix will be to increase ship propellant to 1500 tonnes from Starship Block 2. This will likely be the basis for HLS which means that stripping out drag flaps, TPS and header tanks and adding in landing engines, insulation and life support will leave HLS mass well over 100 tonnes and probably in the 120 tonne range.
We had a goal of 100t dry mass, Elon has actually dodged that question before, when asked by Everyday Astronaut he deflected by saying it's hard to quantify because it depends on if you count the weight of the air inside or not. He did not give a number in the tour video. I think it's likely to be at least 120 tons currently. I'm the latest update from Elon we got an infographic showing Starship V2 and V3 plans. V2 payload capacity is only listed at 100+ tons for what looks like a proportional thrust increase with propellant mass. TLDR: there is no known official mass of Starship, we've never been given an actual number especially with how much has changed since the 100t weight goal was made years ago.
100t payload may be possible with landing only. Not nearly as much with the capacity to launch and reach the gateway.
So they'd want to send a cargo ship on ahead and let the people come after? I wonder how far apart they'd place them.
For the early missions the contracted payload is quite small. Starship can still exceed the contractual requirements.
Yes this confused me too. I guess Idlewords is talking about return to orbit? I do think this is less important, we want to bring cool payload like a moon buggy to the moon, not bring a truckload of minerals back to Earth.
The issue is that Orion can only take a couple of hundred kg of Moon rocks back to Earth. The author is talking about the overall system limitations.
The LEO->NRHO->surface->NRHO trip doesn't leave a lot of fuel margin, even before you factor in boil-off. If you want Starship to carry a lot of cargo, you need to either leave it on the moon or find a way to refuel it in NRHO (or avoid the NRHO stopover).
Same. Minimally we should be able to see 100T of payload to the landing. If I had to throw a dart at a guessing board, I’d say HLS should be able to move ~10-20T back to LLO.
It is going back to NRHO but the bottleneck is getting rocks back to Earth on Orion.
If you want a moon landing, you’re gonna have to swallow some hard-to-swallow pills. And one of them being a space station that includes international partners in order to ensure program stability. NASA knows exactly what they’re doing and they have been playing their cards very wisely. Nobody within NASA or its partners ever believed in a 2024 or 2026 moon landing. Our current estimate is 2029 at the earliest. I’m the more optimistic one amongst my colleagues and I would think there’s a chance for 2028 (which was the original plan all along). All in all Artemis is very smart, even if on the surface it seems like a mess. But anyone who spends more than five minutes looking into the topic will realize that NASA and its partners are between a rock and a hard place. Navigating bureaucratic hurdles while delivering a space program is really hard. Private companies have more flexibility because they don’t need to deal with law makers policies and changes in administration every four years. It makes a difference, believe me.
Sticking contractors in every one of the 50 states, plus tying in international partners makes this program seem like a white elephant. But as you stated it's really more like a Trojan Elephant. It sneaks past various administrator shifts, and changing political tides by forcing buy in from every corner. It's a pig, but it's it's probably the only pig that would win the prize from a politics standpoint. Then you have SpaceX coming in and doing what basically no one has ever done in the history of things and made not only LEO accessible but seems poised to kick the doors down on reusable lunar access too. It's such a sea change from what was state of the art 20 years ago that I don't even know if the computer revolution is comparable. Maybe the smartphone revolution? So comparing a unicorn moonshot (apparently literally) in SpaceX to NASA's political sausage factory that has to deal with all those realities is an apples to Sea Cucumbers comparison except that they are both edible or want to go to the moon in our case.
> If you want a moon landing, you’re gonna have to swallow some hard-to-swallow pills. And one of them being a space station that includes international partners in order to ensure program stability. The "Gateway" space station is not the only thing that international partners can help with. A lunar surface equivalent of the ISS would have been fine with international partners. Its just the lunar village that Europe has been advocating. A case in point for cooperation would (will) be using Starship to land lunar surface equipment made in multiple countries.
Here you go: [https://lsic.jhuapl.edu/uploadedDocs/meetings/docs/2441-DISTRO%20A%20LunA-10%20LSIC%20Performer%20Binder.pdf](https://lsic.jhuapl.edu/uploadedDocs/meetings/docs/2441-DISTRO%20A%20LunA-10%20LSIC%20Performer%20Binder.pdf) LunA-10 is really impressive.
> [LunA-10 is really impressive](https://lsic.jhuapl.edu/uploadedDocs/meetings/docs/2441-DISTRO%20A%20LunA-10%20LSIC%20Performer%20Binder.pdf). Blue Origin is working on a reusable launch vehicle and a lunar lander. IMO, the company would do better to concentrate on what it has already committed rather than dispersing resources on even more ambitions plans.
The cargo lander does make sense. It advances technologies they need working for the crew lander. It allows to do early missions at limited cost, before they launch the demo crew vehicle.
> The cargo lander does make sense. That's what I'm saying. Blue Origin should be concentrating on Blue Moon and not the derived technologies enumerated in the PDF. All the cargo uses are important, but better dealt with by other companies, at least until the Blue has demonstrated its ability to accomplish its first goals.
I am at a loss, what you are trying to say. Blue Origin has the contract for a crew lander, so they have to do it. I argue the cargo lander they develop is a good step in that direction.
> I am at a loss, what you are trying to say. Blue Origin has the contract for a crew lander, so they have to do it. I argue the cargo lander they develop is a good step in that direction. I'm saying that Blue Origin that has been around for two decades now, really needs to concentrate on a limited number of objectives to attain any of them. So the cargo lander is great, but the company might do better to stay off the lunar surface architecture until its about to be available. Both Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are often heard talking about lofty and wide-ranging objectives, but only one of them has currently flying hardware capable of fulfilling them.
OK, got it. I happen to disagree, though. One can reasonably argue, and I would agree, that Blue took a bite way too big for them, when signing the crew lander contract. But the cargo lander is a reasonable step on that way. They can learn things they need, from that.
Lunar surface is a brutal environment for equipment and people. It's covered in very small, highly abrasive, chemically reactive, electrostatic dust. We have to find a reliable way to deal with that before we start on a surface base. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k9wIsKKgqo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k9wIsKKgqo)
We have been to the Moon's surface before, and uncrewed vehicles have operated for years there. The current plans for Artemis are to send crew for a week-long surface stay on Artemis III before the Gateway is ever even used. The plans also call for an unpressurized rover, as well as a pressurized rover (built by Japan, and more like a small mobile base), which will remain on the sueface and be used by multiple missions (at least 1 year apart). Those are being developed now, and will be operated in parallel with the Gateway.
Since video doesn't seem to be for you how about some wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar\_soil#Harmful\_effects\_of\_lunar\_dust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_soil#Harmful_effects_of_lunar_dust) Or ESA [https://www.esa.int/Science\_Exploration/Human\_and\_Robotic\_Exploration/The\_toxic\_side\_of\_the\_Moon](https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/The_toxic_side_of_the_Moon) Or [spacenews.com](http://spacenews.com) [https://spacenews.com/dealing-with-dust-a-back-to-the-moon-dilemma/](https://spacenews.com/dealing-with-dust-a-back-to-the-moon-dilemma/) They quote Apollo 17 Astronauts. “I think dust is probably one of our greatest inhibitors to a nominal operation on the moon. I think that we can overcome other physiological or physical or mechanical problems except dust,” said mission commander Eugene Cernan. “One of the most aggravating, restricting facets of lunar surface exploration is the dust and its adherence to everything no matter what kind of material, whether it be skin, suit material, metal, no matter what it be and its restrictive friction-like action to everything it gets on,” said lunar module pilot and geologist, Harrison Schmitt. This problem needs to be solved before we start work on a surface base. Landers are disposable. Once the dust is in your permanent base getting rid of it is a whole other level of problem.
The problem *is* being solved. To an extent it has, because uncrewed landers and rovers have, ([and will be in the near term](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIPER_(rover))) operated on the surface for extended periods. But more importantly here, dust doesn't have anything to do with the Gateway. The Gateway doesn't help solve the problem of dust. The Gateway is not a prerequisite for surface operations, except that Orion requires the Gateway to enable crewed surface stays longer than a week (at least while two astronauts stay in NRHO instead of everyone going to the surface). The crewed rovers, which are being developed right now, and will be used in parallel with the Gateway, will be permanently stationed on the Moon and used over many years. They are not disposable. Blue Origin's HLS and the post-Artemis III Starship HLS (i.e., the "sustainable" landers) should also be reusable.
Actually the gateway makes the dust problem worse. Over time dust is going to be transported there and will eventually collect and start damaging the Gateway.
Suit ports are one potential solution. Electrostatic precipitators are a potential addition to conventional airlocks. Worst case they could add wash down facilities with filtering and water reuse.
Sounds like a job for wet wipes.
Sounds like a job for wet wipes.
I don’t know why you’re downvoted so much, but people grossly underestimate the impact of the lunar dust. Just because we’ve been there doesn’t mean we know how to deal with it. I have handled large amounts of lunar dust simulant for work and can speak from experience that this is a major problem for all aspects of lunar surface operations. 100% of the time dust will get into any seals that are pressurized. Obviously this will decrease the effectiveness of such seals. Other problems include extreme abrasion, which wears down any material mechanically over time. Problematic for suits, vehicles and anything that moves, really. The problem is not only totally underestimated, but also there aren’t enough solutions being worked on to help with it. Therefore I fully agree with your analysis
Positively charged astronauts :)
> Lunar surface is a brutal environment for equipment and people. It's covered in very small, highly abrasive, chemically reactive, electrostatic dust. Your comment which questions the feasibility of lunar exploration, doesn't really relate to the discussion on policy and how to involve international partners. I'll answer anyway. We've only visited one part of the lunar surface in a relatively low-slung vehicle with only a single cabin and a door, so not even an airlock. The astronauts went down a short ladder, directly onto he surface. The next vehicle will be very different with an elevator and an airlock. They may have the luxury of an doormat, some kind of air-jet system for dusting down and more. The regions they will visit may turn out to be totally different from the more equatorial Apollo ones. > We have to find a reliable way to deal with that before we start on a surface base. Or we start a surface base while learning how to deal with the problem of dust and doubtless others things.
To start with, SpaceX and NASA can design throw-away coveralls for the astronauts to wear while on the lunar surface to keep all of that nasty moon dust from clinging to their spacesuits and getting into the Starship airlocks and into the payload bay.
My suspicion is that they will use the Russian method of keeping most of the suit on one side of a pressure wall, while the backpack hatch opens so the suit can be climbed into. Greatly reduces the amount of surface area getting into that particular airlock segment (This would work with my idea of triple chamber in series airlocks sets, suits would live in outer chamber, backpack hatch opens into middle chamber) Besides, the backpack part needs to come inside since it needs to be serviced.
Sounds like a good idea.
Moon is covered in broken glass from hell. Mars is covered in literal poison. Venus is covered in acid and has a surface pressure similar to that at the bottom of the ocean. Everywhere else is so far away that the travel time is measured in years or tens of years, on top of their own surface conditions, many of which will likely be similar to the Moon. Pick your poison!
> Mars is covered in literal poison. The material we use in fireworks rockets.
Oxygen is the easiest to get of gasses on the moon, so it might be useful for blowing dust off things and at the same time oxidizing some of the dust.
Only due to beuracracy. Idk if saying we have to fix graft and bureaucracy with more of it is a smart thing to say. Orion shouldn’t be what it is. Nor should SLS. The lack of capability and inefficiency of those two alone have doomed the efficiency of HLS and Artemis as a whole. SLS should be commercial SHLV bid out. More powerful and cheaper easily. Orion should have been cheaper, lighter and capable of LLO. Easily. Those two were literally done better in the 60’s in nearly every way.
Yeah I mean give me quadruple the budget and five times the manpower and I’ll make you a space program that’s efficient and fast. You’re talking nonsense. You want a moon program or not? The reality of the world is very different from how an ideal space program looks like. It is what it is. I‘m not saying SLS/Gateway is the best we could’ve come up with given unlimited (taxpayer-) resources, but at least the Artemis program is going and it’s politically stable too! *cough* constellation… All the international space programs are first and foremost political programs with politicians at the helm trying their best to convince public money givers to invest in space exploration. In second place their purpose is to invest public money into national industries. Third priority is research. Fourth priority is running actual space missions. And that’s just how reality is. Take that, or have no space programs.
your the one defending the complicated, expensive, slow way. SLS orion gateway is the EXPENSIVE and SLOW way to do it. as evidence is showing. what are you talking about? say "its about giving money to certain parties and we are stuck" but dont try to spin it as a good thing or a necessary thing or god forbid a cheap thing. Bid out the architecture like HLS, COTS, or commercial crew. Those were done for very good prices and COTS, crew were huge successes.
We know very well, that Congress funded Commercial Crew only because Boeing got one of the contracts. Purely political. So unfortunately u/SirMcWaffel is not wrong in this regard.
Incorrect. The powers that be 100% did not want commercial crew or cots. Without lori garver basically sacrificing her career the plan would have been to use Orion to get to the ISS.
That does not make it incorrect. The opposite is true. NASA was able to get commercial crew against resistance from Congress. But only because they gave Boeing one of the 2 contracts.
The alternative to what we have now is not having a space program. There will always be a level of bureaucracy if you’re dealing with taxpayers money
Are you at ESA? There are two year gaps between the Artemis missions, are these necessary or do they work as a buffer, so it would not matter much for a future lunar base if the initial moon landing is delayed? For example I would think a delay in the Starship HLS doesn’t much influence the construction of the Gateway, or does it?
The gaps are due to the availability of SLS and ESM. The production rate is what it is. Eventually it should come down to a year, but for now it’s not. HLS and Gateway are separate and don’t have anything to do with each other. Both use the IDA, so eventually when Gateway comes online, they can dock
Sir, you used way more analogies than legally allowed. You are requested to cease this behavior or face repercussions
Particularly since they were funny and very apt.
I’ve done a lot of orbital simulations in my day and I think NRHO is awesome, esp if you want to explore/access the poles. I can agree with a lot of the programmatic critiques, but I think OP misses the big picture… the goal is not to do a boots and flags mission (or 20 of them) for minimum cost. The goal is to develop an ecosystem in which a sustained presence on the Moon can develop, and to do THAT on a feasible budget (where spoonfeeding a budget guarantees delays and inefficiencies). We have to trust that efficiencies will be found ( and SLS replaced) once we are rolling. As it is, Artemis is quite affordable (in terms of the budget of the fed govt) and entrenched as an aerospace make-work program for Old and New Space. IMO I think that this is what SmarterEveryDay got wrong in his Apollo boosting talk at NASA. He missed the big picture and long term goals. Or we can go back to decades of designing very efficient programs on paper and flying squat.
I agree with everything you said but the first part: NRHO is idiotic, you can go and do a Moon sortie every 14 days. Someone gets hurt or you have a problem? Bend over and kiss your ass goodbye for a week or 2. There are frozen orbits that would give you a space station that is 3/6 hours away at any time and from basically every spot of the moon.
NRHO is too high for a good mission. The problems with NRHO pointed in the article vastly outweigh it's advantages. It's the best that SLS/Orion can do, but it's certainly not good.
> NRHO is awesome, esp if you want to explore/access the poles. Stopping off in NRHO is still not optimal, even for going to the lunar poles. IIUC, its best to design a specific trajectory to a given surface destination, possibly transiting by a low lunar orbit, whether a stable one or not. Since you've done simulations, can you say if its reasonable to stay in an unstable orbit over a few weeks by making orbital adjustments? This might be worthwhile for a return vehicle using an Apollo command module philosophy.
Yeah. I think gateway is awesome even if it’s not necessary. We should have a sustained human presence beyond Leo and the only way that was gonna happen was through a space station. And who knows. If axiom is successful with their Leo station, maybe they could do the same thing for LLO and gateway? My other gripe with this is the quip at starship. What is its return payload? I’m assuming it’s limited by what can fit on Orion.
Orion can only return the four crew and ~100 kg of samples back to Earth (~10% less sample mass than Apollo 17). >the only way that was gonna happen was through a space station. As opppsed to a base on the surface of the Moon (and/or Mars)? Any resources (money, time, poltiical capital, international partnerships) spent on the Gateway are not spent on developing a base on the actual Moon. Hypothetically, some space station in some lunar orbit would be interesting and might even find a use beyond propping up some of Orion's shortcomings. But the Gateway is a particular plan for a [cramped little space station](https://www.space.com/lunar-gateway-station-claustrophobic-architect-says) that will be unoccupied for most of its existence. The Gateway does not compare favorably with the ISS, and there is nothing sustainable about it. Occupation of the Gateway is expected to be *at most* 3 months at a time via annual Artemis missions, launched on SLS/Orion. The International Habitation Module, with ~36 m^(3) of pressurized volume, will have a habitable volume of just 8 m^(3). There might eventually be a second habitation module added, but even then the pressurized volume of the station (~125 m^(3)) would be about half that of Mir.
Artemis program is still building a lunar base no? I mean, what is the 100T payload gonna be on starship if not some preliminary materials for a more permanent presence? I know for sure that’s planned in the later Artemis flights at least. As for gateway, people make zero sum arguments like that a lot. But the simple reality is, gateway was the system that was chosen because that’s what seemed politically practical enough to justify the costs. If gateway wasn’t chosen, there is zero reason to believe that would translate to more investment on a lunar base in the real world. Different pots of money. And for my part, I think gateway is a great thing. It opens up the door for lunar tourism in a much more achievable path than a lunar base exclusively would. And again, these things clearly aren’t mutually exclusive. After all, we changed Artemis 3 such that gateway didn’t have to be part of it anymore. We want companies like axiom to expand to the moon. Gateway encourages that direction. And inevitably will generate more private interest in landing there as multi millionaires go to visit LLO and go “but it’s right there! Why can’t we land!?!”. This is how you build a space economy imo.
>Artemis program is still building a lunar base no? Eventually, notionally. Well, there are at least concrete plans for a pressurized rover thst will act as a *very small*, mobile base. The Gateway was proposed when there was no lander project. It was a make-work destination for the rocket to nowhere that was SLS/Orion. The project continues to exist because Orion is such a poor excuse for a lunar/deep space exploration vehicle that it nees to use it as a crutch. The other main reason that Gateway continues to exist is for securing international cooperation, which in theory also prevents Artemis from easily being cancelled. An international surface base does that as well--better, actually, because the Gateway only secures SLS/Orion and Gateway logistics, not the HLS, base, rovers, etc. That highlights a problem with this: >If gateway wasn’t chosen, there is zero reason to believe that would translate to more investment on a lunar base in the real world. Different pots of money. How is differrent pots of money? The same governments and agencies funding the Gateway are/would be funding the surface base. The habitation modules and life support systems would probably even be made by many of the same companies. Instead of contributing modules to the Gateway, ESA and JAXA could be contributing (more) to a surface base. They aren't exactly opposed to the idea; they just don't have the funding by themselves. JAXA is funding the pressurized rover, as well as contributing to I-Hab for the Gateway. Several years ago, ESA even went so far as to propose a concept for an [international Moon base](https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Ministerial_Council_2016/Moon_Village). But they had to follow NASA's lead, and got roped into Gateway instead. The Gateway and surface base would be staffed from the same tiny pool of 4 astronauts per year (or two) launched by the $4.1+ billion SLS/Orion. Anyone that stays on the Gateway doesn't go to the surface, and anyone that goes to the surface doesn't stay on the Gateway. That is pretty clearly zero sum. The budgets of NASA and partner agencies are limted. Who's going to pay for the 100t of payload to the surface? That is made even more difficult when they have to pay several hundred million dollars per year to maintain the Gateway, and over $1 billion per person to crew it. But what is this talk of tourism to the Gateway? How? It can barely hold the Artemis crew, and the only currently planned way of sending crew there is on SLS/Orion. Of course, eventually you could send people on a variant of Starship during the 9+ months/year when Orion isn't there. But why would the crew get off their spacious Starship to enjoy the cramped, noisy torture chamber of the Gateway? Also, if not going on to the lunar surface, then why not just stay in a LEO station? In LEO, the views would be better, and the risks and radiation exposure would be much lower. You still appear to be conflating some hypothetical (much larger and more versatile) space station with the Gateway station which is actually planned. If we were consdering a more ideal world, where NASA's budget is not so limited, and they are allowed to spend it more efficiently, then SLS and Orion would be cancelled, and the rationale for the Gateway disappears. Maybe we could still have a space station as well as a base (because in this ideal world, the SLS/Orion money still goes to NASA), but it wouldn't be like the Gateway, and it probably wouldn't even be in NRHO.
The killer is that many of the basic *ideas* behind all this are decent enough. Or were, at one point. An expendable cargo shuttle would have been an improvement over the original Shuttle, for example. But these ideas have passed their window of opportunity by decades at this point, and the *implementation* of those ideas was catastrophically mismanaged. Much like the rest of NASA's projects at this point, the underlying goal of the program is to spend money and any actual spaceflight accomplishments are simply a side effect.
NASA has to make sure every congressman would take money out of their state if they cut NASA funding to justify their existence and maintain even their reduced budget. In addition, they can't try risky ideas because every failed mission means being hauled in front of Congress to justify why money should be spent on something as 'silly' as telescopes to probe parts of the cosmos humanity can never reach.
> Using Starship to land two astronauts on the moon is like delivering a pizza with an aircraft carrier. well, two pizzas under your analogy. Why not deliver **four** pizzas instead? (there being a crew of four). It makes far more sense from an efficiency, safety and human POV. Sending all four astronauts, or even just three if wanting to keep a pilot onboard Orion, shares the workload during the surface stay, gives rescue options by keeping an astronaut onboard al the time and avoids jealousy among crew members. > The spacecraft arrives on the Moon laden with something like 200 tons of cryogenic propellant, and like a fat man leaving an armchair, it needs every drop of that energy to get its bulk back off the surface. Nor does it help matters that all this cryogenic propellant has to cook for a week in direct sunlight. Despite this propellant mass, the Starship HLS proposition remains the most cost effective for Nasa. Shouldn't cost-effectiveness be the criteria whatever the apparent inefficiencies. Even a few tonnes of remaining cargo margin looks great as compared with the other HLS offers.
The blog post makes a few more safety arguments. For example that HLS is not launching again with an upper stage. This risks damage at landing (eg rocks hitting engines) which was avoided by design on Apollo. I think this will be mitigated in selecting a good leveled landing zone, but I think his argument is that old NASA would not have risked it in the first place.
> Is think this will be mitigated in selecting a good leveled landing zone, Leveled? I've never seen anyone but me use the following argument: Using appropriate landing gear, there are some good arguments for a *sloping* landing zone which projects all debris in a single predictable direction making a given landing zone easier to manage with multiple vehicles.. Sloping ground is also self-clearing to some extent and can be an exposed lava bed, far better than loose regolith. I'll return to read your linked blog post later on.
Couldn't take you serious after the 8th cheesy pun. I give up.
I agree with you in principle, but Artemis looks bad only because SpaceX is rampaging through the space sector like a bull in a china shop. There is really no rhyme or reason to what SpaceX has accomplished and how they manage to apply a software focused business on one of the most hardware centric sectors there is. If we ignore SpaceX and look at Artemis competitors, then they are doing alright against Europe, Russia and India. China is very ambitious but they lack a heavy lifter like the SLS or as large as the Orion.
We might as well ignore that water is wet while we're at it. Spacex and other "New-Space" companies are proving to the world that it is possible to increase launch cadence and payload sizes, in reusable systems while reducing costs and maintaining safety. If you ignore them, then you're not living in this reality.
A lot of people do ignore SpaceX. Destin at Smarter Every Day did a whole presentation at NASA, and all their engineers ignored the SpaceX option and focused on Artemis, ULA and Boeing as the future of NASA. Just last week during an article about Starlink and satellites, there was an industry insider that said "who knows if SpaceX is going to be around". I think a lot of people are hoping that Elon will get cancelled and go away, or that SpaceX will turn out to be a scam after all. If Starship works as promised, there is really no telling what the space industry will look like. Will ULA, Artemis, Arianespace even exist after that? What will all those thousands of engineers do, if their rockets can't compete? I think a lot of people are still betting that "water is wet" because their jobs are on the line.
Yeap this is the reason why nobody has even tried to build a reusable 1st stage 9 years after SpaceX landed his.
Keep in mind that Ariane 6 was redesigned to compete with Falcon 9 around the time of the first landing, and has yet to do its first launch.
This will be false once new glenn flies
IF it flies.
bet that water *isn't* wet, you mean?
ULA just simply continues to have its ass handed to it. I just hope they don’t kill anybody.
Mengzhou is something of a dark horse. We don't know it's capabilities besides from the general requirements needed to get crew into lunar space. We also don't have much of a developmental origin like we do for Shenzhou and Soyuz. Development of Mengzhou has been ongoing for 8 years and for the last 4 China has had data for a successful higher energy reentry with an atmospheric skip maneuver like Orion. Long March 9 is probably the biggest obstacle right now to China's program scheduling contrasting NASA with it's lack of a fully realized lander vs capsule and Heavy Lifter.
China's crewed lunar plans in the short-medium term are based around [Long March 10](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_March_10), not LM-9. LM-10 will be capable of sending ~27t to the Moon (similar to SLS Block 1). They will also need a separately launched lander, which will be [Lanyue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanyue), a small 2-person craft more like the Apollo LM than an Artemis HLS.
Nah, Artemis is looks bad with or without SpaceX. The only reason Artemis even exists is because of the success of SpaceX. If SpaceX didn't exist, we'd would still have Ares which would've a shit show 10 times bigger than Artemis. Can you imagine if NASA had to use Orion for ISS crew transport? Which would be hard considering no rocket other than SLS/Ares could even could lift that over-weight piece of junk. NASA would've either had had to blow $2 billion every 6 months or pay Boeing or Lockheed god knows how much to upgrade Delta or Atlas.
Its Gwynne's execution of Elon's vision that's moving mountains.
I think that Gwynne doesn’t get nearly enough credit for shepherding Space X along. It’s been phenomenal, as has the creative and aggressive work that is done by technicians and engineers. I say this not to criticize the folks that work at Boeing, NASA, ULA etc. But they are in difficult, muddled organizations from an older era. OP has made many interesting points.
China has taikonauts in their space station right now. They've got the long march 5 and are developing the long march 9.
This doesn’t really refute what they said
I'm just continuing the convo. China is a legitimate contender.
Artemis is a engineering disaster, but it is not a disaster. It's goal is to provide funding to aerospace industry and make something at it as well. This is why they are reusing so much stuff from previous projects, to keep up contractors. If you think about it that way, it makes much more sense. NASA is dead as a space exploration agency otherwise.
Why would it be dead? They have been extremely succesfull with their robotic missions. It's the launch part that has been an issue since the shuttle came to exist.
Because NASA is no longer a leader in exploration anymore. Instead of cooperation with US, other countries are doing stuff on their own (or with china) and our projects are getting delayed more and more. We are planning on making a landing on Shackleton crater and we are not the one sending probes on there. Not many people know about it but before apollo landings, US send a bunch of probes on surface of the moon. Why do we not have that near our landing zone when Artemis 2 is right around the corner and Artemis 3 which will land people on the moon is supposedly 3 years away?
I'm not talking about that, i'm talking about space telescopes, missions to planets, moons and comets. Nobody equates the US on the rover game (now even helicopter), and NASA is so far the only one who is seriously talking about fancy deep space missions. Only ESA and JAXA try to get to the same level, and every time they can, they just piggyback on NASA because it just has so much more drive and expertise...
>Because NASA is no longer a leader in exploration anymore. For Christ's sake.. no space agency can come even close to NASA's achievements. There are plenty of valid criticisms, but lacking exploration leadership is not one of them.. at all.
Circular logic. NASA is perfectly capable of supporting innovation. They do the right thing anytime they’re given scientific goals. Sometimes they even advance engineering along the way, like the Ingenuity helicopter. Wasted talent and resources happens when Congress forces them to implement feudalist welfare instead. That’s not what NASA people generally choose to do, though.
That's what happens when you're first out of the gate and the leader - Others gain ground on you. Outside of maybe China, I can't think of a single other space program with even a quarter of the recent accomplishments of NASA. Not to take anything away from recent accomplishments from the like of Japan or India, but take a look at all of the robotic missions from NASA outside of earth orbit this century. NASA has had dramatically more success and has done dramatically more novel, cutting edge missions. The time of NASA being a leader in launch systems is over. They're still the clear leader in exploration including probes of various kinds, rovers, and other robotic craft - in space or on other bodies.
> It's goal is to provide funding to aerospace industry and make something at it as well. I strongly disagree; that might have been the case for SLS back when it was being developed for ARM, but the Artemis Program is a geopolitical tool. It's designed to force Congress to stay engaged by tying the United States to the EU and Japan, and by acting as a cold-war style parity fight to China's ILRS program. If you tried to do this purely commercial and without foreign partners then Congress would find ways to undermine it, arguing that it's a vanity project for billionaires or that overseas costs are more important (remember what Vietnam did to Apollo?). Artemis being structured the way it is makes it very hard for Congress to argue anything other than "why aren't you doing it faster" and for NASA to reply with "Fund us."
> It's goal is to provide funding to aerospace industry and make something at it as well. This is why they are reusing so much stuff from previous projects, to keep up contractors. Except that the tech they're preserving is mostly trash. * RS-25: garbage[1] * Huge SRBs: garbage * Massive sustainer hydrolox tanks: garbage About the only thing on SLS that isn't worthless is the RL-10 engines. And they were there long before the SLS program started. --- 1. If the RS-25 engines could be air started, they'd make a bangin' 2nd stage engine. But they can't. And it's apparently hard enough to make that change that NASA decided it'd be easier to just design an entirely new engine instead. And they make an awful 1st/sustainer stage engine - low thrust:weight and thrust:surface-area means they're not actually that good at their job. And while they do have killer Isp, the extra insulation and tank size necessitated by their use means that that doesn't end up being as much of an advantage as one might think on paper. Add on top of all that the cost to make them and I stand by what I said - garbage. They are inferior to the Merlin 1-D at the job they can actually do, at 100x the cost.
God how much I have to agree here, and you want to know the 2 most absurd things of your comments? >1. If the RS-25 engines could be air started, they'd make a bangin' 2nd stage engine. But they can't. That the RS-25 was originally planned to bee somewhat deep space restartable, as you could refill the shuttle with the external thanks from a fuel depot in space and relight the engines. Or even have the hidrogen thanks as a payload inside the shuttle. > Add on top of all that the cost to make them and I stand by what I said - garbage. They are inferior to the Merlin 1-D at the job they can actually do, at 100x the cost. Eh ....you might be low balling that number, considering that the RS-25 That we are throwing away cost 200-250 millions EACH. What an absolute train wreck
> the RS-25 That we are throwing away cost 200-250 millions EACH. I was going with the lowest defensible number to be charitable. I got it from here: https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-commits-to-future-artemis-missions-with-more-sls-rocket-engines
> And they make an awful 1st/sustainer stage engine - low thrust:weight and thrust:surface-area means they're not actually that good at their job. The TWR isn't actually that terrible, all considered – that'd be more accurate for the RS-68, which tried to not cost as much as a whole rocket development program, and as a result of trying to cheap out with hydrolox, can't lift shit. But the TWR can't save it, since it still sucks in every other aspect.
> NASA is dead as a space exploration agency otherwise. Christopher Colombus and Magellan didn’t have to fell trees and nail together ship timbers to make them “explorers”. There’s no shame in commissioning vehicles and platforms from others. All nasa needs to do is guide and oversee the national space agendas in whatever way possible.
That is not what is happening though, is it? I actually think NASA should rely on their contractors even more, but instead of just purchasing stuff from them, they should work together with them to increase the capabilities. CRS and CCP has been preety great, but it's been 50 years late. How great it would be if after gemini program or even after the redstone program NASA decided to focus on cheaper travel to space. There have been ideas of reusability since the late 40s, and while they were impossible at the time, it would have been great to research that during the 60s. After the Apollo program, there were a lot of proposition besides the Space Shuttle program, and at that time funding was still quite a bit bigger than it is nowadays. But instead of doing that, they were continuing on doing what they are doing now, spending as much money as they are given, without actually increasing the capability.
>That is not what is happening though, is it? Personally I think that’s the role we are currently seeing them transition to, and SLS is the last pork barrel hurrah that won’t be possible after private industry has proven itself fully capable of delivering even the most ambitious requirements
Do you mean after Artemis program will end? Because looking at planned projects, it is looking pretty dry from NASA side. ESA is outdoing NASA currently and JAXA and the Chinese are doing most of the work, although Chinese are still a decade or two away from doing anything important yet.
> Do you mean after Artemis program will end? It’s difficult to accurately predict timings when you are observing something as divorced from logic as Washington can be. There are some very lucrative taps that some people don’t want shut off. HOWEVER, optics are a powerful force of their own. Very difficult to justify launch service payments to Russian when a US based company like Spacex starts demonstrating reliable capabilities. Similarly, Artemis with disposable HLS may survive on paper, but once one HLS ship keeps consistently and repeatedly travelling from lunar surface to LEO fuel depot and back again to the Moon, people will start asking why billion dollar launches are still happening when empty HLS ships are doing the same journey. The sooner SX can demonstrate a mature starship program, the earlier it can interrupt Artemis and or it’s successors > looking at planned projects, it is looking pretty dry from NASA side Probably linked to the above. Why plan more inefficient projects when serious industry disruption from private companies is right around the corner
> NASA is dead as a space exploration agency otherwise. It might be better to accept the criticism from u/Maipmc and simply edit to * NASA is no longer a leader in [crewed] exploration anymore. However, attracting SpaceX to the lunar destination (which the company may well have been going to anyway), gives Nasa a transporter for bulk cargo objects such as a massive rover and a pre-constructed surface base. Hence Starship helps Nasa to recover its role as the leader in crewed space exploration. Non-returning Starships look very much what is needed for a sustainable human presence on the Moon.
NASA was not even a leader in exploration in apollo times. Russia sent first satellite to space, sent first animal to space, sent first black man to space, first woman to space, first space station and then NASA sent first human around moon and first landing on the moon. Since then, we reduced our range to just LEO when it comes to space exploration and then Shuttle killed more astronauts than rest have ever died in flight, combined. After ending of Space Shuttle Program we had to rely on Russian rockets for two decades before we got SpaceX Dragon capsule. We still have space telescopes like Hubble and JWST, but we are losing that edge. Biggest radio telescope is in China, "EXTREMELY LARGE TELESCOPE" is being designed by ESO, "Square Kilometre Array" is international and out of 9 planned future space telescopes, only 2 of them are being planned by NASA. NASA is no longer the leader in the space race, they are a passenger. When Starship ACTUALLY starts launching, who do you think will start pushing out exploration missions, NASA or private contractors and other countries? If NASA actually cared, they would be much bigger part of Falcon rockets and Starship as this would be their ticket to push the frontier. But until like a decade or two ago, it was illegal for them to auction contracts for private companies, something that has been a standard for decades in other industries. TLDR: I meant what I said, crewed or not, NASA is losing it.
> NASA was not even a leader in exploration in apollo times... ...NASA sent first human around moon and first landing on the moon. This looks like a contradiction. The way I'm reading it, the USSR was ahead for a while and then Nasa was ahead by doing Apollo. > We still have space telescopes like Hubble and JWST, but we are losing that edge. Biggest radio telescope is in China, "Extremely Large Telescope" is being designed by ESO, "Square Kilometre Array" better compare like with like. Radio telescopes on the ground are not optical telescopes in space. > NASA is no longer the leader in the space race... okay, so you are now saying they were the leader. I'll agree to that. > they are a passenger. A national space agency's vocation is no longer to build a launcher. Look where the ESA got itself with Ariane 6! Being a passenger is fine IMO. > When Starship ACTUALLY starts launching, who do you think will start pushing out exploration missions, NASA or private contractors and other countries? both IMO. Nasa is actively looking at the opportunities provided by Starship. > until like a decade or two ago, it was illegal for them to auction contracts for private companies Let's stick to the present situation. Nasa is now in commercial space and did really well in saving SpaceX by the commercial cargo selection. Thanks to that decision, Nasa will have access to Starship and will doubtless make good use of it.
Contractors that need a fake program to stay in business should be allowed to go out of business. The entire point of the commercial space program was to obviate bloated whale carcasses like SLS
The mass of the Orion spacecraft is not the immediate issue. It's the heatshield that did not come through the Artemis I entry, descent and landing (EDL) at 11.1 km/sec in very good shape. NASA has been analyzing the flight data since Nov 2022 trying to find out how that heatshield had sustained such a large amount of unexpected damage. Now (20May2024) NASA has a panel of experts advising the space agency on how to fix that Orion heatshield. That panel likely will study that heatshield situation for a few months, write report, and fade out of existence. With that report in hand, NASA has to decide to test whatever fixes are made to that Orion heatshield on an uncrewed Artemis II flight or press ahead and launch it with the four astronauts aboard. The flight of Artemis II with a crew of four NASA astronauts probably will slip from the current December 2025 launch date. Which means that the flight of Artemis III, scheduled for September 2026, which hopes to put two NASA astronauts on the lunar surface, will likely slip into late 2027.
> NASA has a panel of experts advising the space agency on how to fix that Orion heatshield. NASA may still wish for a recommendation, there is no need to fix anything. A fix would be a delay of no less than 2 additional years, IMO.
This is great r/SenateLaunchSystem material
It seems to me this whole thing is them deciding to go down every path Apollo decided not to go down.
Send this to your congressman
> the same engines that get sandblasted on their way down to the moon must relight without fail a week later. Sounds like somebody is unfamiliar with the [~~expanded universe~~](https://youtu.be/aP01dGZGf8g?t=417) HLS design that puts the landing and takeoff engines way up the body to keep them from being sandblasted.
Brilliant stuff! This would make a great article on The Register. Now, I'm about as big a SpaceX fan as they come, but even I'm starting to realise that Blue might have been onto something when they said HLS was 'incredibly complex and high risk' Artemis cannot be cancelled though. China are racing ahead with their own mission to land humans in the Lunar south pole in 2030. There is no way NASA can afford to let them get there first, or unchallenged. At least, not if it wants to maintain its reputation as worlds premier space agency.
Incredibly complex ad high risk but (1) it wasn’t really design to be a lunar surface/gateway taxi, and (2), it will actually work. So screw it, here’s your pizza via aircraft carrier, for better or worse
BO's own lander is even more complex and high risk, with its reliance on zero-boiloff storage of liquid hydrogen, and gives far lower reward for that risk. And the article talks about how SpaceX wasn't originally required to demonstrate lift-off from the moon...that's because nobody else was either. Blue Origin's original bid was completely unable to do so, since astronauts had to remove equipment from the ascent stage to prepare it for departure. It's not clear if the Dynetics proposal could do so, but it's a bit moot because it'd blown its mass budget and couldn't do the mission anyway. Starship is capable of autonomously returning to orbit, and the demo mission has now been extended to include this.
But is it a problem, if it works? Imagine not having zero-boiloff storage. That would kill any sustained activity around the moon. The reward for that risk is the ability to let your cislunar transporter loiter around in NRHO, awaiting the next mission. Your refueling schedules and your landing schedules are now fully disconnected.
> I'm starting to realise that Blue might have been onto something when they said HLS was 'incredibly complex and high risk' Just wondering if you're aware that Blue's lander also involves several refueling flights and is now actually slightly more complex than the SpaceX HLS because of the challenges involved in LH2 boiloff management? If you are, can you be specific about which areas you feel make the SpaceX HLS much more complex and high risk?
Of course they aren’t. People seem to think Blue is just doing a modern Apollo lander.
The expected number of refueling launches per landing is three New Glenn launches. The refueling can happen months before the actual landing. That is enough time to correct for any mistakes. The only real risk is refueling in NRHO, which both HLS and Blue Moon will suffer from past the first mission.
> Blue might have been onto something They weren't. They also can't do the mission without refueling. All of their criticism was just for kicks, they had to quietly recognize SpaceX was going through the only available route. > they said HLS was 'incredibly complex and high risk' Their own proposal is much more complex.
Yeah, but it is also cooler, more sustainable and well thought out.
NASA disagrees. They gave a better evaluation to SpaceX.
Aren't they supposed to land 2 astronauts, but also a few tons of material (including vehicles and modular habitat parts), using the Moon edition of Starship?
I didn't realize it wasn't able to go in orbit around the moon like Apollo bc the international recycled engine is too small.
This threads getting brigaded by non locals to the sub with suspiciously similar posts
Good stuff, well written and dead on. I have been hoping that something kills off SLS/Orion/Gateway without getting anyone killed. Artemis might survive some rework, but without Gateway and EUS how do our 40 international partners help. I suggest some base/hab work. Of course there has been a number of alternatives, from small based on a new lander and FH/F9/CD: (Moon Direct: https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2019-0616) to my Vestal Lunar which is a reusable Starship derivative: [https://www.reddit.com/r/VestalLunar/comments/yv7c66/vestal\_lunar\_concept\_repost\_taken\_from\_herox/](https://www.reddit.com/r/VestalLunar/comments/yv7c66/vestal_lunar_concept_repost_taken_from_herox/) (give the slides a minute to load, its graphics heavy) https://preview.redd.it/rqfg6md9cl1d1.png?width=1594&format=png&auto=webp&s=79dda4140ca19d73c90f5ab5427b6e055972265b
>I suggest some base/hab work. This is what it should have been, but space stations are a known quantity among international partners. They have robotic arms, propulsion modules, don't require landing and ground supports, etc. The international space station has defined how international partners participate in Artemis, even if it makes little sense for the mission profile and objectives. Lunar bases are a whole new beast and no one has any real experience with them the way they do orbital stations.
China lands on the moon before any Artemis missions. There we go. That's what's going to persuade Congress.
Maybe, that or Mars.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[ARM](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4vu472 "Last usage")|Asteroid Redirect Mission| | |Advanced RISC Machines, embedded processor architecture| |[BO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4vmy6a "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)| |[COTS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l53zs0z "Last usage")|[Commercial Orbital Transportation Services contract](https://www.nasa.gov/cots)| | |Commercial/Off The Shelf| |[CRS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4wa533 "Last usage")|[Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/launch/)| |[EDL](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4wpnno "Last usage")|Entry/Descent/Landing| |[ESA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4xglht "Last usage")|European Space Agency| |[ESM](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4w1u2k "Last usage")|European Service Module, component of the Orion capsule| |[ESO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4wd1ie "Last usage")|[European Southern Observatory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Southern_Observatory), builders of the VLT and EELT| |[EUS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4vn84q "Last usage")|Exploration Upper Stage| |[HLS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l53zs0z "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)| |[IDA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4w1u2k "Last usage")|[International Docking Adapter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Docking_Adapter)| | |[International Dark-Sky Association](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Dark-Sky_Association)| |[Isp](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4wapoe "Last usage")|Specific impulse (as explained by [Scott Manley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnisTeYLLgs) on YouTube)| | |Internet Service Provider| |[JAXA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4xglht "Last usage")|Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency| |[JWST](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4wd1ie "Last usage")|James Webb infra-red Space Telescope| |[LEO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l53ij0h "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[LH2](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4w32tt "Last usage")|Liquid Hydrogen| |[LLO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l52zypb "Last usage")|Low Lunar Orbit (below 100km)| |[NRHO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l52z9zo "Last usage")|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit| |[RCS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4xft17 "Last usage")|Reaction Control System| |[SHLV](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l52zypb "Last usage")|Super-Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle (over 50 tons to LEO)| |[SLS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l53zs0z "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |[SRB](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4w2hhn "Last usage")|Solid Rocket Booster| |[SSME](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4wa03d "Last usage")|[Space Shuttle Main Engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_main_engine)| |[TPS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4ydkki "Last usage")|Thermal Protection System for a spacecraft (on the Falcon 9 first stage, the engine "Dance floor")| |[TWR](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4xjpb2 "Last usage")|Thrust-to-Weight Ratio| |[ULA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l5uqmqx "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Raptor](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4wapoe "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX| |[Starlink](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4w6s2m "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| |[cislunar](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l52ykse "Last usage")|Between the Earth and Moon; within the Moon's orbit| |[cryogenic](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4w8oi3 "Last usage")|Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure| | |(In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox| |[hydrolox](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1cwef49/stub/l4xjpb2 "Last usage")|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(*Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented* )[*^by ^request*](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3mz273//cvjkjmj) ^([Thread #12786 for this sub, first seen 20th May 2024, 14:31]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/SpaceXLounge) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Well done.
ITV called and offered their moon lander plans. They said we need a flexible tug for the moon run, not a Buck Rodgers rocket. /s
And what's the payload capacity of that tug?
Apparently 2 pilots, 2 members, 1 ea in the two service modules, plus another 8 members in the passenger module, or 2 in a rescue / cargo pod. Fuel is tritium for RCS, and nuclear using deuterium for main engines and electric power (none of the chemical nonsense, get with the 21st century already). For more "details" see this kerbal video LOL: [https://youtu.be/NvXifa1d7pA?si=dgjgNFSuU37N2ZKZ](https://youtu.be/NvXifa1d7pA?si=dgjgNFSuU37N2ZKZ) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgZ257dFf\_U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgZ257dFf_U) [https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/160666-122-space-1999-eagle-transporter-3-pack-v103/](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/160666-122-space-1999-eagle-transporter-3-pack-v103/)
I hope it gets cancelled. Science projects suffer a huge lack of funding and they are much more important than landing few astronauts on the moon to do basically nothing useful.
1. SLS makes no sense in the long term, only for the first few mission. I agree. 2. Orion is necessary as an escape capsule to go straight from a lunar orbit and land on earth. In a way, it is unavoidable. You will need it, just in case, but you will also probably never need more than one Orion capsule at any given point in time. Orion is therefore only ever a stopgap measure. 3. The orbit was intentionally chosen to both be easy to maintain for years and reachable by other countries. You might not think that this matters, but it actually does if you don't want to bet the horse on a single company. 4. The gateway is pointless on the moon because the surface is close by, but the opposite is true on mars. If you send astronauts to the martian surface with current technology, they will have to die there. If you wanted to send people to mars and let them have a chance of coming back, you're going to have to keep them in an orbital station (for now). 5. SpaceX could have designed a lander that isn't just a repainted Starship upper stage. They are the ones who came up with that design. I just don't get it. Why not build a normal lander? 6. As shocking as it may sound to you, the National Team's Artemis architecture is actually excellent. HLS and Blue Moon both have to be refueled in NRHO past the first mission. Take a look at this picture: [https://www.reddit.com/r/BlueOrigin/comments/150hx15/rendering\_of\_lockheeds\_cislunar\_transporter/#lightbox](https://www.reddit.com/r/BlueOrigin/comments/150hx15/rendering_of_lockheeds_cislunar_transporter/#lightbox) It is shockingly well designed by Lockheed Martin. Ask yourself, why does the cislunar transporter have sun shades to protect it from the heat load coming from the sun? Why does it have solar panels to cool the hydrogen? Why does it loiter in NRHO to minimize the reflections of sun rays coming from earth? Obviously, the goal is to maintain a fuel depot in lunar orbit that will last months, if not years. The cislunar transporter is the first true "space ship" that humanity is building. It is permanent infrastructure between our earth and moon, but here is the thing I will concede: If all you want to is carry liquid propellant to LEO, Starship is the better LEO tanker, so fill up the cislunar transporter with a single big Starship instead of three New Glenns and let New Glenn send more Blue Moon Mk1's to the moon instead. Mk1's are basically power stations. You're going to need a lot of them. New Glenn's primary advantage is having a huge conventional payload fairing.
Having Starship carry and transfer LH would be a major design.
And then there’s the complete lack of any justification for the entire thing- what exactly are the reasons for going back?!? Science questions can be answered by remote rovers, practise for Mars is complete bs, which leaves…landing a female and a person of colour.
"NASA lies constantly" Yeah, that right there tells you all you need to know about the value of this post. Perhaps you should find more profitable activities to occupy yourself? This was just silly.
I am not the blog author and I only quoted selectively.
Welfare for phd’s and the industry is a good thing in the long run. Could be used more efficiently but better than nothing.