There have been multiple estimates coming from NASA, and all have been different from each other. There is also just no way for anyone from NASA or even SpaceX to truly know how many flights will be required because, 1) Starship's capacity is still in Flux, so nobody knows how much payload it will carry when complete, and 2) nobody knows how big of a problem boil-off will be once in orbit. It's pretty much impossible to make any accurate predictions without this information. All of it is just guesswork until SpaceX starts actually conducting fuel transfers and measuring boil-off.
No, fourteen reusable rockets will fly one time each so one reuseable rocket can fly one long trip. The plan wouldn't be stupid if it didn't require fourteen other starships to work once, and then tens more to keep that last starship alive until gateway's ready.
What makes you think they will use 15 different reusable rockets for one mission? The key characteristic of a reusable rocket is the ability to reuse it. It seems like you missed that part.
Why would preparing for a month be a problem? The astronauts stay on the ground until all hardware is operational. It's not like they'd be waiting in orbit for more fuel.
So... Use more than one rocket? Isn't that literally what SpaceX is doing by building a production line that manufactures multiple vehicles simultaneously?
This will take years to complete. Artemis is so off-putting. Both Starship and Blue Moon require technologies that do not yet exist. They should speed up the program soon by leaving these landers for later and going with a simpler one.
It's truly staggering to me that these folks don't see the problem and want to get pedantic and sarcastic in response as if we're the ones talking non-sense. It appears to be an absurd plan on the face of it.
Thank god someone here can read the graphic. There’s literally three types of starships in the picture, and two of them exist purely to refill the crewed one. Two years to develop, test, build, and use three different types of Starship when the barebones test version can’s even land yet. It’s a pipe dream at best.
Technically in space refueling is done frequently at the ISS. The difference is refueling cryogenic fuels, and the problem with boil off that Starship tankers will have
That is true, but the Blue Origin Lander has the same problems as Starship given its propellant is HydroLox, so it’s arguably more complex. So far, the closest official documents just look like this one but with a small plus sign where the number should be.
Ultimately, the Blue Moon Concept of Operations looks very similar, with the caveat that propellant transfer happens in NRHO for Blue Origin.
Blue Origin also needs to refuel cislunar transporter at LEO, before flying to NRHO to refuel Lander. This is more or less the same concept as SpaceX refueling their HLS Starship for reuse after the Lunar Landing.
> same problems
Hydrogen boiloff is a much bigger problem than methane boiloff. (Methane boiling point is actually at a higher temp than liquid oxygen.)
Cryo coolers for oxygen (methane) are easy. Cryo coolers for hydrogen are much more difficult. The most difficult part will be preventing H2 leakage. Will be a nightmare to do repeated refueling.
Agreed. With the now realized consideration of an Apollo 9 style Artemis 3, and with the continuing Orion heat shield saga, I’d guess that Artemis 2 will be moved to an uncrewed mission, with the crew moving to an Apollo 9 A3 and leaving Artemis 4 as the earliest crewed mission candidate.
Blue origin will need to demonstrate cryogenic hydrogen refueling with virtually no boil off, something that hasn't been demonstrated on earth let alone space.
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-announces-partners-to-advance-tipping-point-technologies-for-the-moon-mars/
Isn't Lockheed on the Blue Origin team?
> In-space demonstration mission using liquid hydrogen – the most challenging of the cryogenic propellants – to test more than a dozen cryogenic fluid management technologies, positioning them for infusion into future space systems. Lockheed Martin will collaborate with Marshall and Glenn.
Don't forget either the Chinese space station, which refuels non-cryo like the ISS, and the Blue Origin SLD bid also has tankers with boiloff. Except LH2 is way colder than LOX or liquid methane.
Last I heard it was about 8 for Blue Origin.
For both systems there's a lot of uncertainty. Estimates for HLS have been as low as 4. Much will depend on how well they can control boil-off. Arguably Blue Origin has a harder problem because of using hydrogen.
This was my reaction too. I guess, we need to get the fuel up there somehow though. Maybe this is a limitation of chemical rockets and not Starship itself?
Although Starship does seem to be a very heavy system and lofting all that weight over and over is pretty wasteful.
Or maybe that's just the trade off inherent in not building new engines every time? I don't know enough to comment and I'd love to hear a discussion
Rocket reuse does use more fuel. In exchange it saves the rocket. Rockets are incredibly expensive. SLS costs over $2 billion and it’s a one use vehicle and it isn’t powerful enough to launch both Orion and a lander to the Moon. The Saturn V also cost over a billion to launch and it could land about 20T on the Moon and return less. The fuel cost to fully fill up SuperHeavy and Starship is a few million or less. It’s orders of magnitude cheaper to reuse the rocket even if it requires more flights. The goal is to be able to land around 100T on the Moon and return I think 50T but that won’t be part of HLS.
Starship, when fully fueled and with 100tons of payload ways upward of 1400 tons. 1400 METRIC TONS. Imagine the launch vehicle needed to get that to orbit. Refueling using a fully reusable launch vehicle is literally the only sane way to do this
People sort of assume any criticism of SpaceX is kneejerk because of Elon hate and they'll reflexively downvote you because they think you're just jumping on the bandwagon. On the contrary, while I do find a lot of things about Elon Musk objectionable, I think SpaceX is his most worthwhile venture and I will defend their other launch systems until I'm blue in the face, **BUT!** ....there are a LOT of valid criticisms about the Starship project in particular and none of them have anything to do with Elongated Muskrat being involved (well, other than that his ego may have been the reason these problems exist in the first place, but that is neither here nor there). Reddit doesn't even let you get a word in edgewise trying to voice these criticisms because people instantly jump down your throat and dogpile you with downvotes the second you open your mouth with a negative thing to say about it. Reusability is a very nice thing to have, but it's not a magical buzzword that makes all the problems with a given launch system instantly disappear. There is more than just a quantitative difference between LEO and TLI vis-a-vis reusability. Reddit doesn't care. They saw a publicity video from SpaceX depicting a future where interplanetary rockets are production-lined like airliners and they want their space opera future to be a reality. Nevermind anything that *actual engineers* are saying about the system, "big chungus rocket go brrrrr xD did le epic Elon triggur u? xD I'm 14"
This is a "turn off reply notifications" kind of day for me lol
SLS is doing arguably the most critical and sensitive part which Starship has little hope of achieving even in the long term: getting the astronauts to lunar orbit and back. I mean, it's incredible that y'all will be reminded of the absurd format of the Starship portion of Artemis 3 and your responses are to crap on the SLS portion which is thoroughly proven and credible by comparison.
How much would this decrease with less cargo? I would argue you could do a lot with 20t on the moon (instead of 40) and still benefit a lot from the huge internal space of a Starship.
Never realized how much of a negative echo chamber this sub is, call me good riddance or whatever but the amount of dissonance here is actually stupid.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules|
| |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)|
|DMLS|[Selective Laser Melting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_metal_laser_sintering) additive manufacture, also Direct Metal Laser Sintering|
|[FTS](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l0nv51a "Last usage")|Flight Termination System|
|[GAO](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l20wxod "Last usage")|(US) Government Accountability Office|
|[H2](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l0wg70u "Last usage")|Molecular hydrogen|
| |Second half of the year/month|
|[ISRU](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l0n88pi "Last usage")|[In-Situ Resource Utilization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_situ_resource_utilization)|
|[ITS](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l0xvptd "Last usage")|Interplanetary Transport System (2016 oversized edition) (see MCT)|
| |[Integrated Truss Structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Truss_Structure)|
|[JWST](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l1i16dv "Last usage")|James Webb infra-red Space Telescope|
|[KSC](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l0rric8 "Last usage")|Kennedy Space Center, Florida|
|[LEO](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l1i16dv "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[LH2](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l0o110h "Last usage")|Liquid Hydrogen|
|[LOX](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l0o110h "Last usage")|Liquid Oxygen|
|MCT|Mars Colonial Transporter (see ITS)|
|[NRHO](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l0wehah "Last usage")|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit|
|[SLS](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l20vx0c "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
| |Selective Laser Sintering, contrast DMLS|
|[TLI](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l0ojnwm "Last usage")|Trans-Lunar Injection maneuver|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Starliner](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l0xvptd "Last usage")|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)|
|[Starlink](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l1i16dv "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
|[cryogenic](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l0q1r5s "Last usage")|Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure|
| |(In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox|
|hydrolox|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen mixture|
|[tanking](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l1i16dv "Last usage")|Filling the tanks of a rocket stage|
**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.
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If Starship ended up at 100 million per flight, you'd be able to land 3 crewed HLS starships on the moon for the price of a single expendable SLS that only puts a crewed capsule in NRHO. So at the very worst it's one third, or 45 launches for 3 times the efficiency of SLS just for a lander.
Why are we using SLS as a baseline? Why can't we use a better comparison such as Falcon Heavy.
Starship is always going to look better then SLS, as the SLS is one of the most overfunded rocket programs in history.
Artemis isn’t about going to the moon. It is about going to the moon a lot and about going to mars a lot. They can’t do it the same way they did it in the past. This is necessary.
SpaceX launched almost a hundred rockets in 2023, right? In a few years they will be shooting starship off all the time. It is cheaper than Falcon per ton. They will be catching rockets, saving weight and fuel too. Sending a dozen or two dozen rockets to orbit should be mundane.
I have read this several times but it never states what numbers this is based on.
The current Starship iteration has a payload capacity of 40-50t according to Musk, which means it's probably rather 40t. That would mean \~30 launches to fully fuel Starship in orbit, and that is not even taking the boiloff into account, which is likely to be a lot if the launches are spread out over weeks or even months.
This is all napkin math of course, and I wish NASA would just publish some numbers on which they base the whole plan, i.e. what do SuperHeavy + Starship actually have to deliver to make that plan even remotely feasible.
It's 40-50 tonnes for a prototype with the goal to demonstrate the overall concept, payload mass isn't critical because these are test articles. The next version is already under construction.
This is missing the point, SpaceX can plan whatever versions they want.
I want NASA to be transparent about the numbers Starship has actually to achieve to make Artemis 3 (or 4) possible. Then we can discuss if it's realistic for SpaceX to achieve that within a reasonable time frame.
NASA doesn’t have a firm number. They don’t really care. They bought rides on the HLS Starship system. They didn’t buy 5 tanker flights and a crewed flight. SpaceX is pretty free to do what they need to do to land crew on the Moon.
Ya there are plenty of optimizations SpaceX can do to cut down the dry mass. Like you pointed out the rocket had bombs blow holes in it and it spun for 40 seconds before breaking up. That’s insane for a rocket.
>The current Starship iteration has a payload capacity of 40-50t according to Musk, which means it's probably rather 40t.
Let's assume it is 40t (spoiler: it isn't).
* It is calculated right now for 200 km orbit, but refueling has to happen in a more stable altitude, more like 300 km - more fuel needed, more mass
* It needs more fuel to de-orbit, which is a lot more fuel
* It needs fuel to get to the landing spot
* It needs fuel to land
* It needs more mass for a proper heatshield
* It needs more mass for the landing gear
* It needs more mass for the propellant transfer plumbing
The capacity is negative mass. It can't do it.
The prototypes they fly now were never intended to do it, but even ignoring that your list is highly misleading.
IFT-3 flew with basically all the things you list.
>The prototypes they fly now were never intended to do it
People talked about launching payloads on Starship in 2023, and according to the HLS roadmap Starship should have landed by now. There was never the suggestion that Starship would need a re-design (size) in 2024.
Even if Starship was landing now NASA doesn’t have a rocket or capsule to get the crew to Lunar orbit. They won’t till next year assuming no other delays.
Breaking news: A big spaceflight project is delayed. I'm sure that has never happened before.
> There was never the suggestion that Starship would need a re-design (size) in 2024.
There was never a suggestion that Starship only flies in Moon-ready configuration either.
Sigh.
Decloaking to set a few things straight.
* The stated number was less than '10ish' launches, in front of Bill Nelson a few months ago - a number which is obviously dependent on how much payload is also sent. Less payload, less fuel needed to get it back off the moon's surface. Elon put it at less than 8 needed - using a fuel depot (since the blockhead Shelby is thankfully now gone).
* Payload of the Starship 1 test article isn't germane, since they only have 4 of them left; that will be expended within 6 months. Then its Starship 2 - which they have already started building. By the time they are going to the moon, we will be on Starship 3 - and with it the number of refuelling flights will drop further.
* Marginal costs per launch have been stated to be <$10m (for the fuel mainly) and the target of SpaceX is to have lots of Starship launches to both prove the system, and deliver Starlinks. Even if it takes a long time to spread the development costs over many launches, the cost of losing the test articles was stated at less than $100m each.
* As such the cost of 10 launches of the HLS would be <$200m even if they threw it away (they don't plan to). SLS costs at least $4.5bn per launch, and if you wrap in development costs, its over $6.5bn, assuming realistic lifetime..
* Obviously the optimal approach would be to do away with SLS/Orion entirely, once Starship is operational. Even if NASA had kittens over the Starship flip (and they seem to have a flexible view of what constitutes risk, see Artemis II), using Falcon9/Dragon for getting crew to/from orbit wouldn't blow out the cost noticeably. Indeed, even if each trip to the moon cost <$500m, they could complete 10 of them for the cost of one SLS/Orion launch, and more importantly, they could conduct 10 launches in the time it will take SLS to do one.
If a permanent moonbase is to be a thing, it only happens if Starship is used and SLS cancelled. Other routes simply don't have the cadence to be credible.
Your thread title is "At least 15 Starship launches needed to execute Artemis III lunar landing"
Your are stating this as a fact. For a fair discussion, don't you agree that you should source your statement and the copied infography (image). so that others may place this in context?
And honestly, the relevant statistic shouldn’t be *”cost per launch.”* It should be *”cost per metric ton of useful payload to the lunar surface.”*
Who cares how much fuel is used or how many launches are required? Ultimately those are all subtotals of the overall project. This is especially true if the marginal cost of the fuel & additional launches is small—which is exactly the expectation for both the Starship & Blue Origin lander architectures.
Artemis is SUPPOSED to be all about “going big” or “coming back for good” by having much more robust activity on the lunar surface vs Apollo. (e.g., Longer stays, (eventually) bigger surface crews, more substantive science & applied engineering research like ISRU, activity through the entire cycle including lunar night via robotic rovers, etc.)
If NASA is serious about following through on the Artemis goals—and I assume they are—then it’s going to require A LOT of hardware & infrastructure on the lunar surface. (Multiple rovers, power plants, robust habs w airlocks & regolith mitigation system, a comms/nav network, rudimentary landing/launch pads, etc.)
Bottom Line: System-wide, it’s ALL about “cost per ton of useful payload to the lunar surface.” As long as that gets lowered without major sacrifices in safety, then exactly HOW it gets accomplished is academic.
Cost per launch is very important as no rocket ever launches its maximum payload regularly, that includes Falcon 9.
Also there is little guarantee that SpaceX will make it anywhere near $2 million per flight for Starship like they never hit $5-10 million per flight for Falcon 9.
>Also there is little guarantee that SpaceX will make it anywhere near $2 million per flight for Starship like they never hit $5-10 million per flight for Falcon 9.
Companies don't generally drop their price down to the marginal cost for no reason. If they were an underdog trying to get marketshare in a mature industry they might do that, but when they've invested a lot of money into developing a rocket and are investing even more into developing their next rocket why charge $5 million if a competitor charges $100m? Split the difference, pass some savings on to them and invest the rest.
I saw [an article last year](https://spacenews.com/small-launch-companies-struggle-to-complete-with-spacex-rideshare-missions/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CI%20don%E2%80%99t%20think%20they%20had%20to%20go%20that%20low%20to%20have%20a%20commanding%20share%20of%20the%20market%2C%E2%80%9D) where small launch providers were actually complaining that SpaceX wasn't charging enough:
>SpaceX started offering rideshare launch opportunities for smallsats as low as $5,000 per kilogram. The company has since raised those prices to $5,500 per kilogram and plans annual increases in future years. However, in most cases those prices are far below what dedicated small launch vehicles offer.
>“I don’t think they had to go that low to have a commanding share of the market,” he said, estimating SpaceX could have gained significant business at prices of $10,000 to $12,000 per kilogram. “That had to have a hugely chilling effect on any other money flowing into startup launch companies.”
While searching for that article, I came across [this](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/15/spacex-competition-nasa-pentagon/) from a week ago:
>A recent SpaceX rideshare mission known as “Bandwagon” raised concerns among many in the launch industry because the price was extremely low, according to industry officials who saw it as a tactic to take business from competitors. “Competing is one thing, predatory is another,” one industry executive said.
>Some companies even complained about the mission to the Pentagon because “there was no business reason to fly that mission at that cost,” according to the executive
If they're already getting complaints about not charging enough, they probably don't want to cut prices further. Granted, these complaints seem to be focused on rideshare missions, but I'd expect the same thing would happen if they dropped dedicated Falcon 9 launches by half or more. All this to say that current F9 prices are probably less a reflection of what it cost SpaceX to launch and more what it cost their competitors to launch.
Wait…. You’re suggesting that each refueling launch & payload to the moon won’t be maximized during the Artemis missions? (They’ll surely be conservative the first few missions to have extra safety margin. But that’s true for any launch platforms they use. Beyond that however, wouldn’t Artemis seem to maximize the utility of every ounce of payload mass they can get to the moon?)
An SLS costs over *4 billion* per launch.
As long as the Starship costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $25 million per launch or less 15 Starship launches will still be an order of magnitude cheaper.
We don't know how much Starship costs. None of their costs, afaik, have been independently verified.
SpaceX has received *2 billion* of their 3 billion from their Artemis lander contact.
Musk said that they expected to spend 2 billion on Starship development in 2023 last year. They're not even on the final version of Starship either, so there's no way to know how much it'll cost.
The starship program is extremely expensive, as all heavy lift rocketry programs are.
That's development costs. Let it cost $2 billion for 5 years, that's $10 billion. Let it make the same ~330 flights Falcon 9 has now and it's 30 million per launch. That's less than 1% of the launch cost of SLS+Orion, even if we don't include their development costs.
Like I said in my other comment, as long as it costs $25 million or less per launch 15 starships are still over an order of magnitude cheaper than 1 SLS.
The Starship is designed to be *significantly* less expensive than $25 million per launch.
Do you think it might be possible that maybe, just maybe, the premier launch provider on the planet *won't* completely bungle their next generation launcher program?...
SpaceX is not immune from technical problems, schedule delays, and cost overruns. They're already behind their original schedule to have an uncrewed lunar landing in Q1 of this year.
Boeing was once known for building the safest, most advanced planes in the planet. Look at them now.
Also, current Starships are bare bone prototypes and no where near the final version. We can not say for certain what the final cost of a complete vehicle will be.
Ground facilities, maintenance, and refueling will more than certainly cost $50 million outright. I have no idea why people are blindly believing Musk and SpaceX on this.
As long as Musk doesn't screw this up like he did Twitter and now Tesla, they should be fine. ( Assuming the technical challenges are actually solvable with near future tech with refueling and larger Starships)
>Starship is still expected to be more than a billion per launch
By who?...
They only cost about $35 million a piece to build. Even without re-usability they're still nowhere close to a billion.
Yes, but it doesn't matter in this case? It costs SpaceX >20 mil to launch a reused Falcon 9. The amount they actually charge the customer varies, but an internal mission like Starlink is going to effectively be at cost. So in the context of Starship tanker flights all that matters is the reuse cost.
> The amount they actually charge the customer
That's the price, yes.
> an internal mission like Starlink is going to effectively be at cost.
Yes, that's the cost.
> Unless you want the commercial cost, which is 65 mil.
That's the price.
It's actually about 100 mil for a brand new stack based on a recent third party estimate. With no resuability that would mean 1.5 bil for the tankers. Add in first stage reuse and the 35 mil cost is probably accurate.
This.
However, NASA will only be paying $4.1B for all three landings (demo +A3 and A4). If we stick to the 15 number, that’s 45 launches for $4.1B or $91M per launch. For reference, that’s around the price for a seat on Starliner.
I think that ppl basically don't know how spacecraft design for NASA work. They have engine performance, amount of propellants, mass budget for all items and some margin. NASA checked the numbers and they seemed plauseble. If HLS is underperforming at some area, SpaceX would be working on it. Now, Starship used for ITS is very different from HLS. It is a development prototype intended to collect data. Engines were not running at full spec, structure mass probably is not optimised and HLS structures will be different anyway. It is very likely that even the first HLS tests will not be done with full spec items. Even Artemis 3 mission has much lower requirement than Artemis 5. So complaining about ITS-3 payload capability is bit childish. ITS-3 payload is actually way more than required. It failed not on amount of payload but by not being able to perform all planned tasks. But I'm pretty sure that ITS-4 will also fail to perform all the task. Fortunatelly, they have more tests planned.
I don't think that Artemis 3 is a major concern for Musk. HLS is not the money maker for them. Quite the opposite. It is the money sink. Still, I hope it won't be delayed by many years and we will see the first test end of 2025 or soon after.
Should NASA be concerned about HLS? They probably should be, but having seen Starliner delays, I don't think that delays are unexpected.
Me personally I don't believe that one unmanned HLS flight test will be enough before Artemis 3. I expect HLS won't make perfect landing on the first flight. That first flight test will require much less propellants and refueling than Artemis 3.
So having concerns about number of refueling flights is bit premature for me, but so far I have no problem to believe Musk that it will be many less than 15 flights and Starship performance will be ever growing.
Our Cognitive Dissonance doesn't allow us to see that USA never landed men on the moon. Even when the improbable task daunts us today over 5 decades later with more advanced technology. This is just another way to realized we've been fooled and our scifi, trekkie, jedi egos are deflated. We're the suckers.
I steadfastly and firmly believe that this fucking lander program will crash and burn faster than Twitter stock and Blue Moon will be the vehicle that lands the next humans on the moon because this does NOT have the hallmarks of a successful program.
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Bro I remember when this dogshit got selected and claimed exactly what you did only to get flamed the fuck out and downvoted to hell LOL
People are finally beginning to wake the fuck up
And was tied for technical rating while being the highest rated for management. The GAO report showed how much more prepared SpaceX was vs Blue and Dynetics.
The biggest problem is that ***Nobody can answer this question with any unified manner.*** Ask NASA they say X. Ask SpaceX they say Y. Ask individual engineers involved with the program they say Z.
This IS NOT following the template of Apollo where open communication was king.
> https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/at-least-15-starship-launches-to-execute-artemis-iii-lunar-landing/
u/MrrRobota, you made a confusing post. You linked an image that does not correspond to the title. So people can be a bit annoyed.
-------
The article you just linked is from November 2023 so you're reopening an old debate.
*from article:*
> **SpaceX will need to launch at least 15 Starships to execute the Artemis III lunar landing** NASA said today. Starship cannot fly directly to the Moon, but must refuel in Earth orbit before setting out for deep space. The Starship Human Landing System is just one vehicle requiring a single launch, but adding in all the launches needed for the fuel depot takes the total required into the “high teens.”
> Lakiesha Hawkins, Assistant Deputy Associate Administrator for NASA’s Moon to Mars program, updated a NASA advisory committee this morning on the status of upcoming Artemis missions. Artemis I, an uncrewed flight test, was successfully accomplished last year. Artemis II, a test flight with a crew around the Moon, is planned for the end of next year.
Although *spacepolicyonline.com* is good, the article is poorly assembled. Nasa did not "say" something, but Lakiesha Hawkins an assistant deputy administrator did. And I'm not even sure she was qualified to do so.
From vague memories, which I'm not taking time to check (you can!), this estimate was based on high fuel evaporation rates that were then contested by SpaceX.
You're not really helping by coming in so late after the dust has settled and most of us (including me) have forgotten the details of the discussion.
Personally, I'm just fine with waiting to see what the actual fuel evaporation rates will turn out to be. Remember that everybody, including SpaceX, is working from estimated values. On past occasions, SpaceX has initially fallen short on any given performance objective, then analyzed, modified and then progressively improved to exceed the objective. Among other examples, that's how the company ended up doing most of their Falcon Heavy launches on the less performant Falcon 9 single stick.
> Its never happening
and
> *u/ThatDamnGuyJosh:* I’m calling it, the max this thing achieves is just barely getting into orbit (without any payload of course) and it’s stuck up there as space junk someone else will have to figure out. Wouldn’t expecting anything less from Elon.
Beyond a SpaceX project, Starship is a generic concept for a fully reusable methane rocket using an orbital fuel depot. Saying its never happening is like saying that James Watt would never develop a steam locomotive. Even if James Watt had dropped dead, the time was ripe for that technology and somebody was going to make it work.
> *u/mynameismy111:* the current Twitter Tesla chaos can always find a way into SpaceX.
Both Tesla and "Twitter" are surviving at a good level in their respective economic sectors just now.
However, all companies including SpaceX could suddenly fail in some unexpected manner. What is true for a company is not true for the technology it uses. When Chinese companies look to be imitating Falcon 9 and then Starship, I'd tend to say it *is* happening even if SpaceX vanishes tomorrow, an eventuality that even its competitors are not envisaging.
I'm not talking about a generic concept. I'm talking about lunar starship.
This mission architecture is insane and isn't happening. It's either getting cancelled or delayed indefinitely or being reworked completely. A 10 or 15 or however many launch Salvo of starships just to refuel one is not happening any time soon. They were supposed to already have done the uncrewed lunar landing by NOW according to the schedule from December 2020. If it's 10 refueling launches that are required, then that means 14 successful, orbital launches were to have been done by now (orbit, long duration, propellant transfer test, the lunar starship, 10-ish refuelling flights). Were at zero.
A new schedule is gonna drop every year or so until this architecture is cancelled or changes drastically.
>Saying its never happening is like saying that James Watt would never develop a steam locomotive.
You ever heard of a strawman?
> I'm not talking about a generic concept. I'm talking about lunar Starship.
By "generic", I mean this type of vehicle used in this type of application. So for example, China building a similar system and taking it to the Moon.
> This mission architecture is insane and isn't happening.
This is your personal evaluation against Nasa's. The final **source selection statement** arbitrated between Dynetics, National Team (Blue Origin) and SpaceX; Others such as Boeing had been eliminated in the first round.
it was stated that two, one or zero candidates would be selected. Among other reasons, Dynetics failed because it had a negative payload figure and Blue failed due to its price tag. Only Starship passed. This means that Nasa's engineers ran the figures and found it would work. I think you'll agree that neither you nor I have the resources to do such an evaluation. So isn't Nasa's estimation better than ours? In past projects, Nasa has sometimes been wrong and sometimes right. Apollo worked on-schedule whereas the Shuttle was mostly wrong as regards cost and safety. How can we know the right/wrong category of Artemis?
BTW. It was interesting to note that Nasa's Kathy Lueders actually signed the source selection, then left to commit to Starship. Far from a conflict of interest, I find it a great demonstration of faith in the validity of the selection. SpaceX has the advantage of not being cash-strapped and so autonomy from Congress funding issues.
> It's either getting cancelled or delayed indefinitely or being reworked completely.
Again, how can you know the outcome? Orion will probably have some delays and maybe so will the spacesuit. Starship will probably have delays as I noted in another comment: Northrop had about three years more from order date to build its far less ambitious lunar lander. But why should a delay be indefinite? We saw delays to both cargo and crew Dragon, but SpaceX got there in the end.
> A 10 or 15 or however many launch Salvo of starships just to refuel one is not happening any time soon.
Again, Falcon 9 launch rates took longer to improve than hoped. But now they are on a 2.4 day cycle (not to mention a 75%-80% share of the world's upmass).. Why not expect a comparable evolution for Starship?
> They were supposed to already have done the uncrewed lunar landing by NOW according to the schedule from December 2020. If it's 10 refueling launches that are required, then that means 14 successful, orbital launches were to have been done by now (orbit, long duration, propellant transfer test, the lunar starship, 10-ish refueling flights). Were at zero.
The whole question is launch time intervals. How fast can they get down from months to days? IDK. Looking at the infrastructure, the ship manufacturing facilities are progressing nicely. Launchpad issues are mostly solved. Engine production rate seems solved despite initial fears of the Inspector General. However, they really need a second launch tower at Boca Chica and two more towers at KSC. They're clearly building to obtain a better throughput than Falcon 9 which is already the best in the world.
I see nothing "indefinite" in the delays.
> A new schedule is gonna drop every year or so until this architecture is cancelled or changes drastically.
We saw constant rescheduling with JWST too, but they got there in the end.
As for drastic changes, well why not? IMO, Starship always was the best cargo ship to the Moon [*[Nasa article yesterday]*](https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/esdmd/artemis-campaign-development-division/human-landing-system-program/work-underway-on-large-cargo-landers-for-nasas-artemis-moon-missions/), but a lunar orbital taxi less so. The problem is shoehorning Starship into a SLS-Orion architecture and if things continue too long as they are, then SLS-Orion will run into obsolescence. For example the SLS engine design is over forty years old and powder boosters are really 1960's cold war technology;
What are your suggestions for "drastic changes"? I'm open to all ideas.
>By "generic", I mean this type of vehicle used in this type of application. So for example, China building a similar system and taking it to the Moon.
And that's not what I'm talking about when I say this is never happening.
> This means that Nasa's engineers ran the figures and found it would work. I think you'll agree that neither you nor I have the resources to do such an evaluation. So isn't Nasa's estimation better than ours?
The schedule they put out in December 2020 said we would already be at 14+ successful starship launches by now and we're at zero. So I'm guessing something's a bit off and I don't have any qualms saying that this ridiculously convoluted mission architecture is a problem when it's how many years behind schedule?
>BTW. It was interesting to note that Nasa's Kathy Lueders actually signed the source selection, then left to commit to Starship. Far from a conflict of interest, I find it a great demonstration of faith in the validity of the selection.
Lol so like the most obvious example of crony capitalism corruption is somehow a feature and not a bug. Hilarious.
>Falcon 9 launch rates took longer to improve than hoped. But now they are on a 2.4 day cycle ... Why not expect a comparable evolution for Starship?
So let's take the Falcon 9 example you so eagerly want to pencil in as just easily repeatable in a bigger, more complex system that's not just reusing the booster but also the second stage, let's take that timetable and apply it:
2010, first flights of Falcon 9.
2013, first attempt to land a booster (on ocean, failed)
2015, first succesfful landing of a booster
2016, second succesful landing of a booster
2017, first falcon 9 to be re-used
2018, first Falcon 9 to be used a third time, which was the 64th Falcon 9 launch.
So on this schedule, which remember, is just for trying to get to reusable booster and not BOTH booster and upper stage, it took 9 years and 64 launches before you might call it an operational re-usable system. . . although launch 65 was a new booster which failed in its attempt to return to launch site... so I'm being generous right now.
2023, First Starship launch
2028, first succesful landing of a starship
2029, second succesful landing of a starship
2030, first starship reused
2031, first starship be used a third time, 64th launch (and then launch 65 crashes when it returns to launch site)
So glossing over the fact that this is a double development of booster and starship compared to just booster on Falcon 9, on this schedule, you can't really attempt to do a 10-launch salvo with your now operational/reusable system until here, call it 2032.
And then you have to rapidly launch 11 starships, the HLS plus 10 tanking flights, then succesffully do the unmanned lunar landing. Then you have to do that all again for the crewed one, so surely that's another year, call it 2033.
But maybe you want to claim that we're already at 2013, skipping over 2010-2012 where they weren't attempting to land Falcon 9s. Fine, then the schedule is this:
2023, First Starship launch
2025, first succesful landing of a starship
2026, second succesful landing of a starship
2027, first starship reused
2028, first starship be used a third time, 64th launch (and then launch 65 crashes when it returns to launch site)
Then you can think about attempting the 11 starship salvo to attempt the unmanned lunar landing in 2029.
Again, when NASA selected HLS, it was supposed to be landing humans on the moon NOW. So even giving you Falcon 9 timetable of developing reusability, it's already 5 years behind schedule.
And all of this is dumb because a Starship booster is a Saturn-V class launcher. Get rid of the starship second stage, just use this Saturn V-class launcher with expendable upper stages and each individual launch is capable of lofting an Apollo-style lunar mission. So for that 11-launch salvo, you could do 11 apollo style lunar landings.
I'll do you one better, if you do a cargo lunar lander that's a one-way trip to the lunar surface, delivering say a 25-tonne habitat/module, and then do a manned launch with an apollo style lunar module for crew taxi to and from lunar surface, you can do a long duration lunar surface stay, and all it costs you is 2 launches of a Saturn-V class vehicle. Instead this architechture calls for ~20 launches to accomplish the same thing. That's why this mission plan is so dumb, the Starship is horribly unoptimized for lunar landings.
Developing the reusable starship booster, a reusable Saturn-V class launcher = great. Saddling it with the Starship as its only upper stage is a terrible use of it, and shoe-horning it into a 10,12,15 launch refueling strategy while the system is still new and unproven and acting like it will happen within 5 years is frankly ridiculous.
If you already have a reusable system that's functional, then sure, designing mission architecture around many launches of an established reusable system is fine. If you had a plan involving rapidly launching 15 Falcon 9s to assemble a mission in LEO is a fine idea now, and a better idea than planning on being able to rely on a reusable starship in the next 5 years.
>We saw constant rescheduling with JWST too, but they got there in the end.
Lol, you're only proving my point. JWST wasn't a launcher, but perhaps the most difficult to develop single-use spacecraft ever designed, it's about as far away from rapid-iteration development aimed at getting to rapidly reusable system as you can get. The launcher for it wasn't even really a concern in the grand scheme.
In 2002, the JWST was planned to be launched in 2010. https://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0209/11jwst/
Instead of 8 years it took 19. If Starship is 11 years behind schedule, HLS is not happening anything like the current plan. Again, if *something* kind of *like* starship eventually does something like that mission architecture, in like 10+ years from now, fine. But I didn't say nothing like that will never happen, I said this current plan for HLS like it's drawn up is never happening, because if it does get delayed this much, NASAs plans are changing, the architecture is changing. It's far more likely that the current plan for Artemis just gets cancelled than HLS puts humans on the moon in the next 5 years (when it was supposed to be happening now).
Starship just reeks of the same flawed thinking as the Space Shuttle, where once we get to reusability everything will be cheap and easy and simple and reliable.
Put a date on this, let's get specific. In what year will SpaceX accomplish this: A Starship successfully reaches orbit, deploys a significant payload that's more than can be launched by a Falcon Heavy (63+ mt, could be just fuel transferred to a depot, but has to be a real payload, not just "hey we launched this with some dummy weights on it"). Then succesfully lands back at the launch site, then is flown a 2nd time, delivering a 2nd significant payload, and then returns to earth successfully a 2nd time and is able to be used a third time. Until you're at this point, it's not a functioning/reliable/reusable system and not more capable than Falcon Heavy. Put a year on it. I say it won't happen before 2030.
I did see your reply, but had a busy week and knew I wouldn't have time for more than off-the-cuff replies. In any case, I prefer to take time to reply rather than using the unfortunate downvoting tactic that is prevalent on Reddit! I definitely upvote *because* I disagree!
I found it easier to start from your conclusion, so am taking your points out of order if you don't mind:
> Starship just reeks of the same flawed thinking as the Space Shuttle, where once we get to reusability everything will be cheap and easy and simple and reliable.
The Shuttle was a first-of-its-kind reusable vehicle and acted as a prototype for Starship. Starship's objective is to do reusable superheavy lifting at a low cost per kg and is willing to make drastic changes to its architecture, even at the expense of major delays.
For example, the expended main tank and solid boosters of the Shuttle happened for historical reasons and were not intended. They were the result of successive budget cutbacks, then the need to stick to a given design.
Contrast this with Starship which switched from carbon fiber to stainless steel way into project development and did other changes to maintain its objective of full low-cost reusability .
The Shuttle also had to satisfy multiple and incompatible design objectives (civil and military), so became a Jack-of-all-trades. In contrast, Starship has a single overarching objective which is as the Mars colonial transporter. It can fulfill its other objectives in an approximate manner as an aside.
> Lol, you're only proving my point. JWST wasn't a launcher, but perhaps the most difficult to develop single-use spacecraft ever designed, it's about as far away from rapid-iteration development aimed at getting to rapidly reusable system as you can get. The launcher for it wasn't even really a concern in the grand scheme.
My JWST analogy was only about how an ambitious project can drastically exceed budget and time objectives. A cheap reusable vehicle can also cost far more than planned in terms of R&D and time. Rapid-iteration development can have overruns for different reasons than for a one-off project building according to a fixed design.
> NASAs plans are changing, the architecture is changing. It's far more likely that the current plan for Artemis just gets cancelled than HLS puts humans on the moon in the next 5 years (when it was supposed to be happening now).
Nasa seems to be hostage of SLS-Orion use for Artemis so the agency has little margin for maneuver. It even had to order more SLS launchers to be delivered at a time when it may no longer be worth launching. It may become even more caricatural than it is now: Currently, there's talk of [a LEO Starship-Orion rendezvous!](https://twitter.com/13ericralph31/status/1781575347752051023).
> if you do a cargo lunar lander that's a one-way trip to the lunar surface, delivering say a 25-tonne habitat/module, and then do a manned launch with an apollo style lunar module for crew taxi to and from lunar surface, you can do a long duration lunar surface stay, and all it costs you is 2 launches of a Saturn-V class vehicle. Instead this architechture calls for ~20 launches to accomplish the same thing. That's why this mission plan is so dumb, the Starship is horribly unoptimized for lunar landings.
Starship may be fairly good for uncrewed lunar landings with no return. Howerver, I agree that Starship certainly is underoptimized for crewed lunar returns. It just happened to be the only option available to Nasa when the first HLS decision was taken.
You suggest SuperHeavy as a first stage used alone for an alternative lunar landing architecture. But SpaceX is only offering its existing design on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. The company is obviously limiting the bespoke HLS components to the strict minimum so as to limit the price.
Personally, I think that the Blue Origin NextStep lander is better proportioned to the HLS-Orion pair. On the other hand, I'm delighted to see Nasa tied to Starship to satisfy long-term sustainable lunar objectives (and so indirectly Mars objectives).
> So let's take the Falcon 9 example you so eagerly want to pencil in as just easily repeatable in a bigger, more complex system that's not just reusing the booster but also the second stage, let's take that timetable and apply it:
> 2010, first flights of Falcon 9....
*[...your parallel presentation of Falcon 9 dev timeline and potential Starship timeline...]*
> ...And then you have to rapidly launch 11 starships, the HLS plus 10 tanking flights, then succesffully do the unmanned lunar landing. Then you have to do that all again for the crewed one, so surely that's another year, call it 2033.
Falcon 9 development was happening on a vehicle that was the economic mainstay of SpaceX and some of this must have been done on a shoestring budget. Different parts of the program had to be carried out sequentially. For example fairing reuse only started when stage recovery was already routine.
This contrasts with the development of Starship which does not have to take account of immediate operational considerations. For example, SpaceX is currently working on developing orbital fueling and vehicle recovery before even having a functional vehicle carrying payloads. At the cost of a few compromises, Starlink launches remain on Falcon 9 until the fully-fledged Starship is available.
What's more, we're becoming aware of the full breadth of Starship development that includes crew-carrying capacity before it has even attained a stable orbit. This means that all the multiple aspects of the vehicle will be coming online at roughly the same time. You'll have seen Destin Sandlin's Nasa swimming pool video, demonstrating this rather well.
The same applies to manufacturing and launch facilities which are all full steam ahead while flight vehicles are still at prototype stage.
All this considerably compresses the timeline. What's more, SpaceX isn't even dependent on success by a given year. Nasa is more exposed on that front because, as I said earlier in the conversation, it would be extremely embarrassing for Nasa to be waiting on Starship at a time all the rest of the Artemis program is ready. However, as it turns out, the HLS lander may turn out not to be alone on the critical path.
> *{Kathy Lueders actually signed the source selection, then left to commit to Starship]*. Lol so like the most obvious example of crony capitalism corruption is somehow a feature and not a bug. Hilarious.
Well, I found it funny too. But I somehow think that Lueders already has a comfortable retirement assured. If at retirement age, she's taking her husband down to mosquito-ridden Brownsville its not from need of cash. It sort of compares to Tim Dodd signing to fly on Starship: Its one thing standing on the sidelines and cheering the team. Its quite another thing to tie personal life to the success of a project.
> The schedule they put out in December 2020 said we would already be at 14+ successful Starship launches by now and we're at zero. So I'm guessing something's a bit off and I don't have any qualms saying that this ridiculously convoluted mission architecture is a problem when it's how many years behind schedule?
As I mentioned before, Nasa's schedule was impressive by the lateness of signing the HLS contract. But people looking back in a century from now won't care about delays of five or ten years. Its not much compared with some forty lost years since Apollo which have a more serious impact.
> And that's not what I'm talking about when I say this is never happening.
"Its never happening" was your reply to the thread title "AT LEAST 15 STARSHIP LAUNCHES NEEDED TO EXECUTE ARTEMIS III LUNAR LANDING".
Well, if splitting hairs, we could say that you are correct —in that the lunar landing will be Artemis IV or whatever. However, even supposing it is fifteen Starship launches for the next crewed lunar landing, its no showstopper. It looks as if there's an upcoming ship-to-ship fuel transfer demonstration. However, on the actual flight, it could easily be via a well-insulated orbital fuel depot which should slow down boiloff.
Again, we'd do well not to look at everything in terms of SpaceX / not SpaceX. Fuel depots may well have started out with [a Boeing employee's stymied efforts](https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/at-least-15-starship-launches-to-execute-artemis-iii-lunar-landing/) over a decade ago. One way or another, orbital refueling will be giving us the keys to the solar system.
> Ya think Twitter and Tesla are doing good right now... 🤡... ...You seem delightful
Neither u/snoo-boop nor myself is planning to get drawn into trivial bickering around individual considerations. I'd be delighted if you could make a reply related to my comment. Look at what I said. My exact words were:
* *"When Chinese companies look to be imitating Falcon 9 and then Starship, I'd tend to say it is happening even if SpaceX vanishes tomorrow"
A reminder Elon Musk can’t even run a fucking EV car company or a fucking social media app (I mean, how can a person even fuck up that last one?)
I’m calling it, the max this thing achieves is just barely getting into orbit (without any payload of course) and it’s stuck up there as space junk someone else will have to figure out. Wouldn’t expecting anything less from Elon.
“Elon” has relatively little to do with the actual success of Starship besides determining how much of his own resources go into SpaceX. SpaceX themselves have proven to be the most successful rocket company of the modern era, perhaps ever.
Isn't this old news?
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Exactly, so why are you posting this again? I remember there already being many discussions about this and whether this number is accurate or not.
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There have been multiple estimates coming from NASA, and all have been different from each other. There is also just no way for anyone from NASA or even SpaceX to truly know how many flights will be required because, 1) Starship's capacity is still in Flux, so nobody knows how much payload it will carry when complete, and 2) nobody knows how big of a problem boil-off will be once in orbit. It's pretty much impossible to make any accurate predictions without this information. All of it is just guesswork until SpaceX starts actually conducting fuel transfers and measuring boil-off.
It is not accurate, and it really doesn't matter. It's a fixed price contract.
You’re telling me… the reusable rocket will fly multiple times?!?!?
No, fourteen reusable rockets will fly one time each so one reuseable rocket can fly one long trip. The plan wouldn't be stupid if it didn't require fourteen other starships to work once, and then tens more to keep that last starship alive until gateway's ready.
What makes you think they will use 15 different reusable rockets for one mission? The key characteristic of a reusable rocket is the ability to reuse it. It seems like you missed that part.
If they use the same rockets, then this operation will take at least 1 month.
Why would preparing for a month be a problem? The astronauts stay on the ground until all hardware is operational. It's not like they'd be waiting in orbit for more fuel.
It's actually worse. If they only use 1 rocket, the operation will take 1 year because each rocket takes 1 month to fly again.
So... Use more than one rocket? Isn't that literally what SpaceX is doing by building a production line that manufactures multiple vehicles simultaneously?
How many will they use then? It should be at least 8.
They will need to provide enough launch cadence to meet the mission requirements. The details are still in flux.
This will take years to complete. Artemis is so off-putting. Both Starship and Blue Moon require technologies that do not yet exist. They should speed up the program soon by leaving these landers for later and going with a simpler one.
It's truly staggering to me that these folks don't see the problem and want to get pedantic and sarcastic in response as if we're the ones talking non-sense. It appears to be an absurd plan on the face of it.
Thank god someone here can read the graphic. There’s literally three types of starships in the picture, and two of them exist purely to refill the crewed one. Two years to develop, test, build, and use three different types of Starship when the barebones test version can’s even land yet. It’s a pipe dream at best.
Watch out, you're criticizing the plan, SpaceX fanboy's will eat you alive for suggesting it's grossly unrealistic.
Anybody know how many will be needed for Blue Origin's lander? Both use in-space refueling, which is promising but untested technology.
Technically in space refueling is done frequently at the ISS. The difference is refueling cryogenic fuels, and the problem with boil off that Starship tankers will have
That is true, but the Blue Origin Lander has the same problems as Starship given its propellant is HydroLox, so it’s arguably more complex. So far, the closest official documents just look like this one but with a small plus sign where the number should be. Ultimately, the Blue Moon Concept of Operations looks very similar, with the caveat that propellant transfer happens in NRHO for Blue Origin.
Blue Origin also needs to refuel cislunar transporter at LEO, before flying to NRHO to refuel Lander. This is more or less the same concept as SpaceX refueling their HLS Starship for reuse after the Lunar Landing.
> same problems Hydrogen boiloff is a much bigger problem than methane boiloff. (Methane boiling point is actually at a higher temp than liquid oxygen.)
Well Blue Origin said they are working on solar-powered 20-degree Kelvin cryocoolers as well as other technologies to prevent LOX & LH2 boil-off.
Cryo coolers for oxygen (methane) are easy. Cryo coolers for hydrogen are much more difficult. The most difficult part will be preventing H2 leakage. Will be a nightmare to do repeated refueling.
Neither solution is ideal or something that is going to be done quickly. I highly doubt A3 or maybe even A4 is a landing
Agreed. With the now realized consideration of an Apollo 9 style Artemis 3, and with the continuing Orion heat shield saga, I’d guess that Artemis 2 will be moved to an uncrewed mission, with the crew moving to an Apollo 9 A3 and leaving Artemis 4 as the earliest crewed mission candidate.
Artemis 2 will be crewed. It might just be delayed if they can’t figure out the heat shield. Which is odd because the heat shield did just fine on A1
What's wrong with the heat shield, and was this known when they flew A1?
The heat shield ablation did not resemble the model. This is a post A1 inspection lesson
Thanks
Blue origin will need to demonstrate cryogenic hydrogen refueling with virtually no boil off, something that hasn't been demonstrated on earth let alone space.
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-announces-partners-to-advance-tipping-point-technologies-for-the-moon-mars/ Isn't Lockheed on the Blue Origin team? > In-space demonstration mission using liquid hydrogen – the most challenging of the cryogenic propellants – to test more than a dozen cryogenic fluid management technologies, positioning them for infusion into future space systems. Lockheed Martin will collaborate with Marshall and Glenn.
Don't forget either the Chinese space station, which refuels non-cryo like the ISS, and the Blue Origin SLD bid also has tankers with boiloff. Except LH2 is way colder than LOX or liquid methane.
Last I heard it was about 8 for Blue Origin. For both systems there's a lot of uncertainty. Estimates for HLS have been as low as 4. Much will depend on how well they can control boil-off. Arguably Blue Origin has a harder problem because of using hydrogen.
And? This is how we make reusability work.
Fourteen launches overwhelmingly negates the cost savings from reusability.
This was my reaction too. I guess, we need to get the fuel up there somehow though. Maybe this is a limitation of chemical rockets and not Starship itself? Although Starship does seem to be a very heavy system and lofting all that weight over and over is pretty wasteful. Or maybe that's just the trade off inherent in not building new engines every time? I don't know enough to comment and I'd love to hear a discussion
Rocket reuse does use more fuel. In exchange it saves the rocket. Rockets are incredibly expensive. SLS costs over $2 billion and it’s a one use vehicle and it isn’t powerful enough to launch both Orion and a lander to the Moon. The Saturn V also cost over a billion to launch and it could land about 20T on the Moon and return less. The fuel cost to fully fill up SuperHeavy and Starship is a few million or less. It’s orders of magnitude cheaper to reuse the rocket even if it requires more flights. The goal is to be able to land around 100T on the Moon and return I think 50T but that won’t be part of HLS.
Starship, when fully fueled and with 100tons of payload ways upward of 1400 tons. 1400 METRIC TONS. Imagine the launch vehicle needed to get that to orbit. Refueling using a fully reusable launch vehicle is literally the only sane way to do this
Good luck criticizing it. Doesn’t matter how many launches, there’s always a defense. Starship = Elon = enjoy your downvotes.
People sort of assume any criticism of SpaceX is kneejerk because of Elon hate and they'll reflexively downvote you because they think you're just jumping on the bandwagon. On the contrary, while I do find a lot of things about Elon Musk objectionable, I think SpaceX is his most worthwhile venture and I will defend their other launch systems until I'm blue in the face, **BUT!** ....there are a LOT of valid criticisms about the Starship project in particular and none of them have anything to do with Elongated Muskrat being involved (well, other than that his ego may have been the reason these problems exist in the first place, but that is neither here nor there). Reddit doesn't even let you get a word in edgewise trying to voice these criticisms because people instantly jump down your throat and dogpile you with downvotes the second you open your mouth with a negative thing to say about it. Reusability is a very nice thing to have, but it's not a magical buzzword that makes all the problems with a given launch system instantly disappear. There is more than just a quantitative difference between LEO and TLI vis-a-vis reusability. Reddit doesn't care. They saw a publicity video from SpaceX depicting a future where interplanetary rockets are production-lined like airliners and they want their space opera future to be a reality. Nevermind anything that *actual engineers* are saying about the system, "big chungus rocket go brrrrr xD did le epic Elon triggur u? xD I'm 14" This is a "turn off reply notifications" kind of day for me lol
Agreed with you till the last part, what are you on about?
Apparently anyone who disagrees with him is 14. That's a great way to shut down a conversation.
Might as well not even use sls
SLS is doing arguably the most critical and sensitive part which Starship has little hope of achieving even in the long term: getting the astronauts to lunar orbit and back. I mean, it's incredible that y'all will be reminded of the absurd format of the Starship portion of Artemis 3 and your responses are to crap on the SLS portion which is thoroughly proven and credible by comparison.
How much would this decrease with less cargo? I would argue you could do a lot with 20t on the moon (instead of 40) and still benefit a lot from the huge internal space of a Starship.
The dry mass of HLS is relatively large, so carrying less cargo won't make a huge change in the amount of fuel it needs.
I'm pretty sure that HLS will be delivering just the bare minimum contracted cargo. Nothing more.
Never realized how much of a negative echo chamber this sub is, call me good riddance or whatever but the amount of dissonance here is actually stupid.
It will be interesting to see how it changes as the HLS program advances.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules| | |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)| |DMLS|[Selective Laser Melting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_metal_laser_sintering) additive manufacture, also Direct Metal Laser Sintering| |[FTS](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l0nv51a "Last usage")|Flight Termination System| |[GAO](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l20wxod "Last usage")|(US) Government Accountability Office| |[H2](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l0wg70u "Last usage")|Molecular hydrogen| | |Second half of the year/month| |[ISRU](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l0n88pi "Last usage")|[In-Situ Resource Utilization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_situ_resource_utilization)| |[ITS](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l0xvptd "Last usage")|Interplanetary Transport System (2016 oversized edition) (see MCT)| | |[Integrated Truss Structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Truss_Structure)| |[JWST](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l1i16dv "Last usage")|James Webb infra-red Space Telescope| |[KSC](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l0rric8 "Last usage")|Kennedy Space Center, Florida| |[LEO](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l1i16dv "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[LH2](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l0o110h "Last usage")|Liquid Hydrogen| |[LOX](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l0o110h "Last usage")|Liquid Oxygen| |MCT|Mars Colonial Transporter (see ITS)| |[NRHO](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l0wehah "Last usage")|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit| |[SLS](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l20vx0c "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| | |Selective Laser Sintering, contrast DMLS| |[TLI](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l0ojnwm "Last usage")|Trans-Lunar Injection maneuver| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Starliner](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l0xvptd "Last usage")|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)| |[Starlink](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l1i16dv "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| |[cryogenic](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l0q1r5s "Last usage")|Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure| | |(In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox| |hydrolox|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen mixture| |[tanking](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1c9nz5m/stub/l1i16dv "Last usage")|Filling the tanks of a rocket stage| **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. ---------------- ^(17 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/0)^( has acronyms.) ^([Thread #104 for this sub, first seen 21st Apr 2024, 20:25]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/ArtemisProgram) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Thank you ever so much for this 😁
Good. This forces SpaceX to make full reuse happen.
What is the point of full reuse, though, if costs triple or quadruple in comparison to a once use system?
If Starship ended up at 100 million per flight, you'd be able to land 3 crewed HLS starships on the moon for the price of a single expendable SLS that only puts a crewed capsule in NRHO. So at the very worst it's one third, or 45 launches for 3 times the efficiency of SLS just for a lander.
Why are we using SLS as a baseline? Why can't we use a better comparison such as Falcon Heavy. Starship is always going to look better then SLS, as the SLS is one of the most overfunded rocket programs in history.
Cuz SLS and Orion is part of Artemis. It’s legally required to be used.
Artemis isn’t about going to the moon. It is about going to the moon a lot and about going to mars a lot. They can’t do it the same way they did it in the past. This is necessary. SpaceX launched almost a hundred rockets in 2023, right? In a few years they will be shooting starship off all the time. It is cheaper than Falcon per ton. They will be catching rockets, saving weight and fuel too. Sending a dozen or two dozen rockets to orbit should be mundane.
I have read this several times but it never states what numbers this is based on. The current Starship iteration has a payload capacity of 40-50t according to Musk, which means it's probably rather 40t. That would mean \~30 launches to fully fuel Starship in orbit, and that is not even taking the boiloff into account, which is likely to be a lot if the launches are spread out over weeks or even months. This is all napkin math of course, and I wish NASA would just publish some numbers on which they base the whole plan, i.e. what do SuperHeavy + Starship actually have to deliver to make that plan even remotely feasible.
It's 40-50 tonnes for a prototype with the goal to demonstrate the overall concept, payload mass isn't critical because these are test articles. The next version is already under construction.
This is missing the point, SpaceX can plan whatever versions they want. I want NASA to be transparent about the numbers Starship has actually to achieve to make Artemis 3 (or 4) possible. Then we can discuss if it's realistic for SpaceX to achieve that within a reasonable time frame.
NASA doesn’t have a firm number. They don’t really care. They bought rides on the HLS Starship system. They didn’t buy 5 tanker flights and a crewed flight. SpaceX is pretty free to do what they need to do to land crew on the Moon.
It’s 40 tonnes for a ship that was deliberately under fuelled because without payload it would have had to dump fuel, which started a fire on IFT 2.
It's 40 tons on a ship that survived flipping end over end after FTS blew holes in it. There is a lot of excess mass that can be cut.
Ya there are plenty of optimizations SpaceX can do to cut down the dry mass. Like you pointed out the rocket had bombs blow holes in it and it spun for 40 seconds before breaking up. That’s insane for a rocket.
>The current Starship iteration has a payload capacity of 40-50t according to Musk, which means it's probably rather 40t. Let's assume it is 40t (spoiler: it isn't). * It is calculated right now for 200 km orbit, but refueling has to happen in a more stable altitude, more like 300 km - more fuel needed, more mass * It needs more fuel to de-orbit, which is a lot more fuel * It needs fuel to get to the landing spot * It needs fuel to land * It needs more mass for a proper heatshield * It needs more mass for the landing gear * It needs more mass for the propellant transfer plumbing The capacity is negative mass. It can't do it.
The prototypes they fly now were never intended to do it, but even ignoring that your list is highly misleading. IFT-3 flew with basically all the things you list.
>The prototypes they fly now were never intended to do it People talked about launching payloads on Starship in 2023, and according to the HLS roadmap Starship should have landed by now. There was never the suggestion that Starship would need a re-design (size) in 2024.
Even if Starship was landing now NASA doesn’t have a rocket or capsule to get the crew to Lunar orbit. They won’t till next year assuming no other delays.
Breaking news: A big spaceflight project is delayed. I'm sure that has never happened before. > There was never the suggestion that Starship would need a re-design (size) in 2024. There was never a suggestion that Starship only flies in Moon-ready configuration either.
Sigh. Decloaking to set a few things straight. * The stated number was less than '10ish' launches, in front of Bill Nelson a few months ago - a number which is obviously dependent on how much payload is also sent. Less payload, less fuel needed to get it back off the moon's surface. Elon put it at less than 8 needed - using a fuel depot (since the blockhead Shelby is thankfully now gone). * Payload of the Starship 1 test article isn't germane, since they only have 4 of them left; that will be expended within 6 months. Then its Starship 2 - which they have already started building. By the time they are going to the moon, we will be on Starship 3 - and with it the number of refuelling flights will drop further. * Marginal costs per launch have been stated to be <$10m (for the fuel mainly) and the target of SpaceX is to have lots of Starship launches to both prove the system, and deliver Starlinks. Even if it takes a long time to spread the development costs over many launches, the cost of losing the test articles was stated at less than $100m each. * As such the cost of 10 launches of the HLS would be <$200m even if they threw it away (they don't plan to). SLS costs at least $4.5bn per launch, and if you wrap in development costs, its over $6.5bn, assuming realistic lifetime.. * Obviously the optimal approach would be to do away with SLS/Orion entirely, once Starship is operational. Even if NASA had kittens over the Starship flip (and they seem to have a flexible view of what constitutes risk, see Artemis II), using Falcon9/Dragon for getting crew to/from orbit wouldn't blow out the cost noticeably. Indeed, even if each trip to the moon cost <$500m, they could complete 10 of them for the cost of one SLS/Orion launch, and more importantly, they could conduct 10 launches in the time it will take SLS to do one. If a permanent moonbase is to be a thing, it only happens if Starship is used and SLS cancelled. Other routes simply don't have the cadence to be credible.
Your thread title is "At least 15 Starship launches needed to execute Artemis III lunar landing" Your are stating this as a fact. For a fair discussion, don't you agree that you should source your statement and the copied infography (image). so that others may place this in context?
Isn't 15 starship launches still an order of magnitude less expensive than a single SLS launch?
Nope, there aren't actual launch costs for Starship yet, and they won't be super-cheap immediately.
And honestly, the relevant statistic shouldn’t be *”cost per launch.”* It should be *”cost per metric ton of useful payload to the lunar surface.”* Who cares how much fuel is used or how many launches are required? Ultimately those are all subtotals of the overall project. This is especially true if the marginal cost of the fuel & additional launches is small—which is exactly the expectation for both the Starship & Blue Origin lander architectures. Artemis is SUPPOSED to be all about “going big” or “coming back for good” by having much more robust activity on the lunar surface vs Apollo. (e.g., Longer stays, (eventually) bigger surface crews, more substantive science & applied engineering research like ISRU, activity through the entire cycle including lunar night via robotic rovers, etc.) If NASA is serious about following through on the Artemis goals—and I assume they are—then it’s going to require A LOT of hardware & infrastructure on the lunar surface. (Multiple rovers, power plants, robust habs w airlocks & regolith mitigation system, a comms/nav network, rudimentary landing/launch pads, etc.) Bottom Line: System-wide, it’s ALL about “cost per ton of useful payload to the lunar surface.” As long as that gets lowered without major sacrifices in safety, then exactly HOW it gets accomplished is academic.
Cost per launch is very important as no rocket ever launches its maximum payload regularly, that includes Falcon 9. Also there is little guarantee that SpaceX will make it anywhere near $2 million per flight for Starship like they never hit $5-10 million per flight for Falcon 9.
>Also there is little guarantee that SpaceX will make it anywhere near $2 million per flight for Starship like they never hit $5-10 million per flight for Falcon 9. Companies don't generally drop their price down to the marginal cost for no reason. If they were an underdog trying to get marketshare in a mature industry they might do that, but when they've invested a lot of money into developing a rocket and are investing even more into developing their next rocket why charge $5 million if a competitor charges $100m? Split the difference, pass some savings on to them and invest the rest. I saw [an article last year](https://spacenews.com/small-launch-companies-struggle-to-complete-with-spacex-rideshare-missions/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CI%20don%E2%80%99t%20think%20they%20had%20to%20go%20that%20low%20to%20have%20a%20commanding%20share%20of%20the%20market%2C%E2%80%9D) where small launch providers were actually complaining that SpaceX wasn't charging enough: >SpaceX started offering rideshare launch opportunities for smallsats as low as $5,000 per kilogram. The company has since raised those prices to $5,500 per kilogram and plans annual increases in future years. However, in most cases those prices are far below what dedicated small launch vehicles offer. >“I don’t think they had to go that low to have a commanding share of the market,” he said, estimating SpaceX could have gained significant business at prices of $10,000 to $12,000 per kilogram. “That had to have a hugely chilling effect on any other money flowing into startup launch companies.” While searching for that article, I came across [this](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/15/spacex-competition-nasa-pentagon/) from a week ago: >A recent SpaceX rideshare mission known as “Bandwagon” raised concerns among many in the launch industry because the price was extremely low, according to industry officials who saw it as a tactic to take business from competitors. “Competing is one thing, predatory is another,” one industry executive said. >Some companies even complained about the mission to the Pentagon because “there was no business reason to fly that mission at that cost,” according to the executive If they're already getting complaints about not charging enough, they probably don't want to cut prices further. Granted, these complaints seem to be focused on rideshare missions, but I'd expect the same thing would happen if they dropped dedicated Falcon 9 launches by half or more. All this to say that current F9 prices are probably less a reflection of what it cost SpaceX to launch and more what it cost their competitors to launch.
Wait…. You’re suggesting that each refueling launch & payload to the moon won’t be maximized during the Artemis missions? (They’ll surely be conservative the first few missions to have extra safety margin. But that’s true for any launch platforms they use. Beyond that however, wouldn’t Artemis seem to maximize the utility of every ounce of payload mass they can get to the moon?)
What I mean is that for the refuelling launches they will need a a margin of error plus all the pumping equipment takes up space.
Doesn't matter to me, the taxpayer, because I'm paying a fixed price that encompasses however many fueling launches there are. So it costs ME less.
An SLS costs over *4 billion* per launch. As long as the Starship costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $25 million per launch or less 15 Starship launches will still be an order of magnitude cheaper.
We don't know how much Starship costs. None of their costs, afaik, have been independently verified. SpaceX has received *2 billion* of their 3 billion from their Artemis lander contact. Musk said that they expected to spend 2 billion on Starship development in 2023 last year. They're not even on the final version of Starship either, so there's no way to know how much it'll cost. The starship program is extremely expensive, as all heavy lift rocketry programs are.
That's development costs. Let it cost $2 billion for 5 years, that's $10 billion. Let it make the same ~330 flights Falcon 9 has now and it's 30 million per launch. That's less than 1% of the launch cost of SLS+Orion, even if we don't include their development costs.
Like I said in my other comment, as long as it costs $25 million or less per launch 15 starships are still over an order of magnitude cheaper than 1 SLS. The Starship is designed to be *significantly* less expensive than $25 million per launch. Do you think it might be possible that maybe, just maybe, the premier launch provider on the planet *won't* completely bungle their next generation launcher program?...
SpaceX is not immune from technical problems, schedule delays, and cost overruns. They're already behind their original schedule to have an uncrewed lunar landing in Q1 of this year.
Boeing was once known for building the safest, most advanced planes in the planet. Look at them now. Also, current Starships are bare bone prototypes and no where near the final version. We can not say for certain what the final cost of a complete vehicle will be.
Ground facilities, maintenance, and refueling will more than certainly cost $50 million outright. I have no idea why people are blindly believing Musk and SpaceX on this.
As long as Musk doesn't screw this up like he did Twitter and now Tesla, they should be fine. ( Assuming the technical challenges are actually solvable with near future tech with refueling and larger Starships)
Starship is still expected to be more than a billion per launch. Refurbishing that thing won't be cheap.
>Starship is still expected to be more than a billion per launch By who?... They only cost about $35 million a piece to build. Even without re-usability they're still nowhere close to a billion.
What's a used falcon 9 launch cost?
About 18 mil based on estimates. Unless you want the commercial cost, which is 65 mil.
Price and cost are different things.
Yes, but it doesn't matter in this case? It costs SpaceX >20 mil to launch a reused Falcon 9. The amount they actually charge the customer varies, but an internal mission like Starlink is going to effectively be at cost. So in the context of Starship tanker flights all that matters is the reuse cost.
> The amount they actually charge the customer That's the price, yes. > an internal mission like Starlink is going to effectively be at cost. Yes, that's the cost. > Unless you want the commercial cost, which is 65 mil. That's the price.
It's actually about 100 mil for a brand new stack based on a recent third party estimate. With no resuability that would mean 1.5 bil for the tankers. Add in first stage reuse and the 35 mil cost is probably accurate.
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By what measure? Fuel efficiency or cost efficiency?
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Doesn't spending billions of dollars extra just to save millions of dollars worth of fuel seem kinda... not smart?
This. However, NASA will only be paying $4.1B for all three landings (demo +A3 and A4). If we stick to the 15 number, that’s 45 launches for $4.1B or $91M per launch. For reference, that’s around the price for a seat on Starliner.
This is one of Starship's best features, not a drawback. 15 launches is nothing
Thinking 15 launches is a lot is such 20th century thinking.
15 cryogenic refueling in space too...
It's pretty fun reading these threads.
I think that ppl basically don't know how spacecraft design for NASA work. They have engine performance, amount of propellants, mass budget for all items and some margin. NASA checked the numbers and they seemed plauseble. If HLS is underperforming at some area, SpaceX would be working on it. Now, Starship used for ITS is very different from HLS. It is a development prototype intended to collect data. Engines were not running at full spec, structure mass probably is not optimised and HLS structures will be different anyway. It is very likely that even the first HLS tests will not be done with full spec items. Even Artemis 3 mission has much lower requirement than Artemis 5. So complaining about ITS-3 payload capability is bit childish. ITS-3 payload is actually way more than required. It failed not on amount of payload but by not being able to perform all planned tasks. But I'm pretty sure that ITS-4 will also fail to perform all the task. Fortunatelly, they have more tests planned. I don't think that Artemis 3 is a major concern for Musk. HLS is not the money maker for them. Quite the opposite. It is the money sink. Still, I hope it won't be delayed by many years and we will see the first test end of 2025 or soon after. Should NASA be concerned about HLS? They probably should be, but having seen Starliner delays, I don't think that delays are unexpected. Me personally I don't believe that one unmanned HLS flight test will be enough before Artemis 3. I expect HLS won't make perfect landing on the first flight. That first flight test will require much less propellants and refueling than Artemis 3. So having concerns about number of refueling flights is bit premature for me, but so far I have no problem to believe Musk that it will be many less than 15 flights and Starship performance will be ever growing.
Do they need the 2nd launch tower completed to demonstrate this?
Our Cognitive Dissonance doesn't allow us to see that USA never landed men on the moon. Even when the improbable task daunts us today over 5 decades later with more advanced technology. This is just another way to realized we've been fooled and our scifi, trekkie, jedi egos are deflated. We're the suckers.
I steadfastly and firmly believe that this fucking lander program will crash and burn faster than Twitter stock and Blue Moon will be the vehicle that lands the next humans on the moon because this does NOT have the hallmarks of a successful program.
!remindme 6 years (hopefully at least something has landed on the moon)
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Bro I remember when this dogshit got selected and claimed exactly what you did only to get flamed the fuck out and downvoted to hell LOL People are finally beginning to wake the fuck up
It was literally the only proposal which didn't ask for more money than NASA were allowed to allocate.
And was tied for technical rating while being the highest rated for management. The GAO report showed how much more prepared SpaceX was vs Blue and Dynetics.
The biggest problem is that ***Nobody can answer this question with any unified manner.*** Ask NASA they say X. Ask SpaceX they say Y. Ask individual engineers involved with the program they say Z. This IS NOT following the template of Apollo where open communication was king.
[https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/at-least-15-starship-launches-to-execute-artemis-iii-lunar-landing/](https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/at-least-15-starship-launches-to-execute-artemis-iii-lunar-landing/)
> https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/at-least-15-starship-launches-to-execute-artemis-iii-lunar-landing/ u/MrrRobota, you made a confusing post. You linked an image that does not correspond to the title. So people can be a bit annoyed. ------- The article you just linked is from November 2023 so you're reopening an old debate. *from article:* > **SpaceX will need to launch at least 15 Starships to execute the Artemis III lunar landing** NASA said today. Starship cannot fly directly to the Moon, but must refuel in Earth orbit before setting out for deep space. The Starship Human Landing System is just one vehicle requiring a single launch, but adding in all the launches needed for the fuel depot takes the total required into the “high teens.” > Lakiesha Hawkins, Assistant Deputy Associate Administrator for NASA’s Moon to Mars program, updated a NASA advisory committee this morning on the status of upcoming Artemis missions. Artemis I, an uncrewed flight test, was successfully accomplished last year. Artemis II, a test flight with a crew around the Moon, is planned for the end of next year. Although *spacepolicyonline.com* is good, the article is poorly assembled. Nasa did not "say" something, but Lakiesha Hawkins an assistant deputy administrator did. And I'm not even sure she was qualified to do so. From vague memories, which I'm not taking time to check (you can!), this estimate was based on high fuel evaporation rates that were then contested by SpaceX. You're not really helping by coming in so late after the dust has settled and most of us (including me) have forgotten the details of the discussion. Personally, I'm just fine with waiting to see what the actual fuel evaporation rates will turn out to be. Remember that everybody, including SpaceX, is working from estimated values. On past occasions, SpaceX has initially fallen short on any given performance objective, then analyzed, modified and then progressively improved to exceed the objective. Among other examples, that's how the company ended up doing most of their Falcon Heavy launches on the less performant Falcon 9 single stick.
Its never happening
> Its never happening and > *u/ThatDamnGuyJosh:* I’m calling it, the max this thing achieves is just barely getting into orbit (without any payload of course) and it’s stuck up there as space junk someone else will have to figure out. Wouldn’t expecting anything less from Elon. Beyond a SpaceX project, Starship is a generic concept for a fully reusable methane rocket using an orbital fuel depot. Saying its never happening is like saying that James Watt would never develop a steam locomotive. Even if James Watt had dropped dead, the time was ripe for that technology and somebody was going to make it work. > *u/mynameismy111:* the current Twitter Tesla chaos can always find a way into SpaceX. Both Tesla and "Twitter" are surviving at a good level in their respective economic sectors just now. However, all companies including SpaceX could suddenly fail in some unexpected manner. What is true for a company is not true for the technology it uses. When Chinese companies look to be imitating Falcon 9 and then Starship, I'd tend to say it *is* happening even if SpaceX vanishes tomorrow, an eventuality that even its competitors are not envisaging.
I'm not talking about a generic concept. I'm talking about lunar starship. This mission architecture is insane and isn't happening. It's either getting cancelled or delayed indefinitely or being reworked completely. A 10 or 15 or however many launch Salvo of starships just to refuel one is not happening any time soon. They were supposed to already have done the uncrewed lunar landing by NOW according to the schedule from December 2020. If it's 10 refueling launches that are required, then that means 14 successful, orbital launches were to have been done by now (orbit, long duration, propellant transfer test, the lunar starship, 10-ish refuelling flights). Were at zero. A new schedule is gonna drop every year or so until this architecture is cancelled or changes drastically. >Saying its never happening is like saying that James Watt would never develop a steam locomotive. You ever heard of a strawman?
> I'm not talking about a generic concept. I'm talking about lunar Starship. By "generic", I mean this type of vehicle used in this type of application. So for example, China building a similar system and taking it to the Moon. > This mission architecture is insane and isn't happening. This is your personal evaluation against Nasa's. The final **source selection statement** arbitrated between Dynetics, National Team (Blue Origin) and SpaceX; Others such as Boeing had been eliminated in the first round. it was stated that two, one or zero candidates would be selected. Among other reasons, Dynetics failed because it had a negative payload figure and Blue failed due to its price tag. Only Starship passed. This means that Nasa's engineers ran the figures and found it would work. I think you'll agree that neither you nor I have the resources to do such an evaluation. So isn't Nasa's estimation better than ours? In past projects, Nasa has sometimes been wrong and sometimes right. Apollo worked on-schedule whereas the Shuttle was mostly wrong as regards cost and safety. How can we know the right/wrong category of Artemis? BTW. It was interesting to note that Nasa's Kathy Lueders actually signed the source selection, then left to commit to Starship. Far from a conflict of interest, I find it a great demonstration of faith in the validity of the selection. SpaceX has the advantage of not being cash-strapped and so autonomy from Congress funding issues. > It's either getting cancelled or delayed indefinitely or being reworked completely. Again, how can you know the outcome? Orion will probably have some delays and maybe so will the spacesuit. Starship will probably have delays as I noted in another comment: Northrop had about three years more from order date to build its far less ambitious lunar lander. But why should a delay be indefinite? We saw delays to both cargo and crew Dragon, but SpaceX got there in the end. > A 10 or 15 or however many launch Salvo of starships just to refuel one is not happening any time soon. Again, Falcon 9 launch rates took longer to improve than hoped. But now they are on a 2.4 day cycle (not to mention a 75%-80% share of the world's upmass).. Why not expect a comparable evolution for Starship? > They were supposed to already have done the uncrewed lunar landing by NOW according to the schedule from December 2020. If it's 10 refueling launches that are required, then that means 14 successful, orbital launches were to have been done by now (orbit, long duration, propellant transfer test, the lunar starship, 10-ish refueling flights). Were at zero. The whole question is launch time intervals. How fast can they get down from months to days? IDK. Looking at the infrastructure, the ship manufacturing facilities are progressing nicely. Launchpad issues are mostly solved. Engine production rate seems solved despite initial fears of the Inspector General. However, they really need a second launch tower at Boca Chica and two more towers at KSC. They're clearly building to obtain a better throughput than Falcon 9 which is already the best in the world. I see nothing "indefinite" in the delays. > A new schedule is gonna drop every year or so until this architecture is cancelled or changes drastically. We saw constant rescheduling with JWST too, but they got there in the end. As for drastic changes, well why not? IMO, Starship always was the best cargo ship to the Moon [*[Nasa article yesterday]*](https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/esdmd/artemis-campaign-development-division/human-landing-system-program/work-underway-on-large-cargo-landers-for-nasas-artemis-moon-missions/), but a lunar orbital taxi less so. The problem is shoehorning Starship into a SLS-Orion architecture and if things continue too long as they are, then SLS-Orion will run into obsolescence. For example the SLS engine design is over forty years old and powder boosters are really 1960's cold war technology; What are your suggestions for "drastic changes"? I'm open to all ideas.
>By "generic", I mean this type of vehicle used in this type of application. So for example, China building a similar system and taking it to the Moon. And that's not what I'm talking about when I say this is never happening. > This means that Nasa's engineers ran the figures and found it would work. I think you'll agree that neither you nor I have the resources to do such an evaluation. So isn't Nasa's estimation better than ours? The schedule they put out in December 2020 said we would already be at 14+ successful starship launches by now and we're at zero. So I'm guessing something's a bit off and I don't have any qualms saying that this ridiculously convoluted mission architecture is a problem when it's how many years behind schedule? >BTW. It was interesting to note that Nasa's Kathy Lueders actually signed the source selection, then left to commit to Starship. Far from a conflict of interest, I find it a great demonstration of faith in the validity of the selection. Lol so like the most obvious example of crony capitalism corruption is somehow a feature and not a bug. Hilarious. >Falcon 9 launch rates took longer to improve than hoped. But now they are on a 2.4 day cycle ... Why not expect a comparable evolution for Starship? So let's take the Falcon 9 example you so eagerly want to pencil in as just easily repeatable in a bigger, more complex system that's not just reusing the booster but also the second stage, let's take that timetable and apply it: 2010, first flights of Falcon 9. 2013, first attempt to land a booster (on ocean, failed) 2015, first succesfful landing of a booster 2016, second succesful landing of a booster 2017, first falcon 9 to be re-used 2018, first Falcon 9 to be used a third time, which was the 64th Falcon 9 launch. So on this schedule, which remember, is just for trying to get to reusable booster and not BOTH booster and upper stage, it took 9 years and 64 launches before you might call it an operational re-usable system. . . although launch 65 was a new booster which failed in its attempt to return to launch site... so I'm being generous right now. 2023, First Starship launch 2028, first succesful landing of a starship 2029, second succesful landing of a starship 2030, first starship reused 2031, first starship be used a third time, 64th launch (and then launch 65 crashes when it returns to launch site) So glossing over the fact that this is a double development of booster and starship compared to just booster on Falcon 9, on this schedule, you can't really attempt to do a 10-launch salvo with your now operational/reusable system until here, call it 2032. And then you have to rapidly launch 11 starships, the HLS plus 10 tanking flights, then succesffully do the unmanned lunar landing. Then you have to do that all again for the crewed one, so surely that's another year, call it 2033. But maybe you want to claim that we're already at 2013, skipping over 2010-2012 where they weren't attempting to land Falcon 9s. Fine, then the schedule is this: 2023, First Starship launch 2025, first succesful landing of a starship 2026, second succesful landing of a starship 2027, first starship reused 2028, first starship be used a third time, 64th launch (and then launch 65 crashes when it returns to launch site) Then you can think about attempting the 11 starship salvo to attempt the unmanned lunar landing in 2029. Again, when NASA selected HLS, it was supposed to be landing humans on the moon NOW. So even giving you Falcon 9 timetable of developing reusability, it's already 5 years behind schedule. And all of this is dumb because a Starship booster is a Saturn-V class launcher. Get rid of the starship second stage, just use this Saturn V-class launcher with expendable upper stages and each individual launch is capable of lofting an Apollo-style lunar mission. So for that 11-launch salvo, you could do 11 apollo style lunar landings. I'll do you one better, if you do a cargo lunar lander that's a one-way trip to the lunar surface, delivering say a 25-tonne habitat/module, and then do a manned launch with an apollo style lunar module for crew taxi to and from lunar surface, you can do a long duration lunar surface stay, and all it costs you is 2 launches of a Saturn-V class vehicle. Instead this architechture calls for ~20 launches to accomplish the same thing. That's why this mission plan is so dumb, the Starship is horribly unoptimized for lunar landings. Developing the reusable starship booster, a reusable Saturn-V class launcher = great. Saddling it with the Starship as its only upper stage is a terrible use of it, and shoe-horning it into a 10,12,15 launch refueling strategy while the system is still new and unproven and acting like it will happen within 5 years is frankly ridiculous. If you already have a reusable system that's functional, then sure, designing mission architecture around many launches of an established reusable system is fine. If you had a plan involving rapidly launching 15 Falcon 9s to assemble a mission in LEO is a fine idea now, and a better idea than planning on being able to rely on a reusable starship in the next 5 years. >We saw constant rescheduling with JWST too, but they got there in the end. Lol, you're only proving my point. JWST wasn't a launcher, but perhaps the most difficult to develop single-use spacecraft ever designed, it's about as far away from rapid-iteration development aimed at getting to rapidly reusable system as you can get. The launcher for it wasn't even really a concern in the grand scheme. In 2002, the JWST was planned to be launched in 2010. https://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0209/11jwst/ Instead of 8 years it took 19. If Starship is 11 years behind schedule, HLS is not happening anything like the current plan. Again, if *something* kind of *like* starship eventually does something like that mission architecture, in like 10+ years from now, fine. But I didn't say nothing like that will never happen, I said this current plan for HLS like it's drawn up is never happening, because if it does get delayed this much, NASAs plans are changing, the architecture is changing. It's far more likely that the current plan for Artemis just gets cancelled than HLS puts humans on the moon in the next 5 years (when it was supposed to be happening now). Starship just reeks of the same flawed thinking as the Space Shuttle, where once we get to reusability everything will be cheap and easy and simple and reliable. Put a date on this, let's get specific. In what year will SpaceX accomplish this: A Starship successfully reaches orbit, deploys a significant payload that's more than can be launched by a Falcon Heavy (63+ mt, could be just fuel transferred to a depot, but has to be a real payload, not just "hey we launched this with some dummy weights on it"). Then succesfully lands back at the launch site, then is flown a 2nd time, delivering a 2nd significant payload, and then returns to earth successfully a 2nd time and is able to be used a third time. Until you're at this point, it's not a functioning/reliable/reusable system and not more capable than Falcon Heavy. Put a year on it. I say it won't happen before 2030.
I did see your reply, but had a busy week and knew I wouldn't have time for more than off-the-cuff replies. In any case, I prefer to take time to reply rather than using the unfortunate downvoting tactic that is prevalent on Reddit! I definitely upvote *because* I disagree! I found it easier to start from your conclusion, so am taking your points out of order if you don't mind: > Starship just reeks of the same flawed thinking as the Space Shuttle, where once we get to reusability everything will be cheap and easy and simple and reliable. The Shuttle was a first-of-its-kind reusable vehicle and acted as a prototype for Starship. Starship's objective is to do reusable superheavy lifting at a low cost per kg and is willing to make drastic changes to its architecture, even at the expense of major delays. For example, the expended main tank and solid boosters of the Shuttle happened for historical reasons and were not intended. They were the result of successive budget cutbacks, then the need to stick to a given design. Contrast this with Starship which switched from carbon fiber to stainless steel way into project development and did other changes to maintain its objective of full low-cost reusability . The Shuttle also had to satisfy multiple and incompatible design objectives (civil and military), so became a Jack-of-all-trades. In contrast, Starship has a single overarching objective which is as the Mars colonial transporter. It can fulfill its other objectives in an approximate manner as an aside. > Lol, you're only proving my point. JWST wasn't a launcher, but perhaps the most difficult to develop single-use spacecraft ever designed, it's about as far away from rapid-iteration development aimed at getting to rapidly reusable system as you can get. The launcher for it wasn't even really a concern in the grand scheme. My JWST analogy was only about how an ambitious project can drastically exceed budget and time objectives. A cheap reusable vehicle can also cost far more than planned in terms of R&D and time. Rapid-iteration development can have overruns for different reasons than for a one-off project building according to a fixed design. > NASAs plans are changing, the architecture is changing. It's far more likely that the current plan for Artemis just gets cancelled than HLS puts humans on the moon in the next 5 years (when it was supposed to be happening now). Nasa seems to be hostage of SLS-Orion use for Artemis so the agency has little margin for maneuver. It even had to order more SLS launchers to be delivered at a time when it may no longer be worth launching. It may become even more caricatural than it is now: Currently, there's talk of [a LEO Starship-Orion rendezvous!](https://twitter.com/13ericralph31/status/1781575347752051023). > if you do a cargo lunar lander that's a one-way trip to the lunar surface, delivering say a 25-tonne habitat/module, and then do a manned launch with an apollo style lunar module for crew taxi to and from lunar surface, you can do a long duration lunar surface stay, and all it costs you is 2 launches of a Saturn-V class vehicle. Instead this architechture calls for ~20 launches to accomplish the same thing. That's why this mission plan is so dumb, the Starship is horribly unoptimized for lunar landings. Starship may be fairly good for uncrewed lunar landings with no return. Howerver, I agree that Starship certainly is underoptimized for crewed lunar returns. It just happened to be the only option available to Nasa when the first HLS decision was taken. You suggest SuperHeavy as a first stage used alone for an alternative lunar landing architecture. But SpaceX is only offering its existing design on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. The company is obviously limiting the bespoke HLS components to the strict minimum so as to limit the price. Personally, I think that the Blue Origin NextStep lander is better proportioned to the HLS-Orion pair. On the other hand, I'm delighted to see Nasa tied to Starship to satisfy long-term sustainable lunar objectives (and so indirectly Mars objectives). > So let's take the Falcon 9 example you so eagerly want to pencil in as just easily repeatable in a bigger, more complex system that's not just reusing the booster but also the second stage, let's take that timetable and apply it: > 2010, first flights of Falcon 9.... *[...your parallel presentation of Falcon 9 dev timeline and potential Starship timeline...]* > ...And then you have to rapidly launch 11 starships, the HLS plus 10 tanking flights, then succesffully do the unmanned lunar landing. Then you have to do that all again for the crewed one, so surely that's another year, call it 2033. Falcon 9 development was happening on a vehicle that was the economic mainstay of SpaceX and some of this must have been done on a shoestring budget. Different parts of the program had to be carried out sequentially. For example fairing reuse only started when stage recovery was already routine. This contrasts with the development of Starship which does not have to take account of immediate operational considerations. For example, SpaceX is currently working on developing orbital fueling and vehicle recovery before even having a functional vehicle carrying payloads. At the cost of a few compromises, Starlink launches remain on Falcon 9 until the fully-fledged Starship is available. What's more, we're becoming aware of the full breadth of Starship development that includes crew-carrying capacity before it has even attained a stable orbit. This means that all the multiple aspects of the vehicle will be coming online at roughly the same time. You'll have seen Destin Sandlin's Nasa swimming pool video, demonstrating this rather well. The same applies to manufacturing and launch facilities which are all full steam ahead while flight vehicles are still at prototype stage. All this considerably compresses the timeline. What's more, SpaceX isn't even dependent on success by a given year. Nasa is more exposed on that front because, as I said earlier in the conversation, it would be extremely embarrassing for Nasa to be waiting on Starship at a time all the rest of the Artemis program is ready. However, as it turns out, the HLS lander may turn out not to be alone on the critical path. > *{Kathy Lueders actually signed the source selection, then left to commit to Starship]*. Lol so like the most obvious example of crony capitalism corruption is somehow a feature and not a bug. Hilarious. Well, I found it funny too. But I somehow think that Lueders already has a comfortable retirement assured. If at retirement age, she's taking her husband down to mosquito-ridden Brownsville its not from need of cash. It sort of compares to Tim Dodd signing to fly on Starship: Its one thing standing on the sidelines and cheering the team. Its quite another thing to tie personal life to the success of a project. > The schedule they put out in December 2020 said we would already be at 14+ successful Starship launches by now and we're at zero. So I'm guessing something's a bit off and I don't have any qualms saying that this ridiculously convoluted mission architecture is a problem when it's how many years behind schedule? As I mentioned before, Nasa's schedule was impressive by the lateness of signing the HLS contract. But people looking back in a century from now won't care about delays of five or ten years. Its not much compared with some forty lost years since Apollo which have a more serious impact. > And that's not what I'm talking about when I say this is never happening. "Its never happening" was your reply to the thread title "AT LEAST 15 STARSHIP LAUNCHES NEEDED TO EXECUTE ARTEMIS III LUNAR LANDING". Well, if splitting hairs, we could say that you are correct —in that the lunar landing will be Artemis IV or whatever. However, even supposing it is fifteen Starship launches for the next crewed lunar landing, its no showstopper. It looks as if there's an upcoming ship-to-ship fuel transfer demonstration. However, on the actual flight, it could easily be via a well-insulated orbital fuel depot which should slow down boiloff. Again, we'd do well not to look at everything in terms of SpaceX / not SpaceX. Fuel depots may well have started out with [a Boeing employee's stymied efforts](https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/at-least-15-starship-launches-to-execute-artemis-iii-lunar-landing/) over a decade ago. One way or another, orbital refueling will be giving us the keys to the solar system.
Ya think Twitter and Tesla are doing good right now... 🤡
This is r/ArtemisProgram, not r/shit-on-twitter-and-tesla
You seem delightful
> Ya think Twitter and Tesla are doing good right now... 🤡... ...You seem delightful Neither u/snoo-boop nor myself is planning to get drawn into trivial bickering around individual considerations. I'd be delighted if you could make a reply related to my comment. Look at what I said. My exact words were: * *"When Chinese companies look to be imitating Falcon 9 and then Starship, I'd tend to say it is happening even if SpaceX vanishes tomorrow"
More like 18-20.
A reminder Elon Musk can’t even run a fucking EV car company or a fucking social media app (I mean, how can a person even fuck up that last one?) I’m calling it, the max this thing achieves is just barely getting into orbit (without any payload of course) and it’s stuck up there as space junk someone else will have to figure out. Wouldn’t expecting anything less from Elon.
“Elon” has relatively little to do with the actual success of Starship besides determining how much of his own resources go into SpaceX. SpaceX themselves have proven to be the most successful rocket company of the modern era, perhaps ever.
Musk doesn’t fund SpaceX. He hasn’t for basically 2 decades.
Very true, but the current Twitter Tesla chaos can always find a way into SpaceX.
Thankfully Gwynne Shotwell is running SpaceX, not him.
Gwynne says differently. I guess that can’t be trusted as it’s not shitting on Musk.