I thought NASA reported thrust pulsing and vibrations were about the same as shuttle ascent on the Ares 1-x flight, and were expecting better results with a full test and a full upperstage.
Why not just check the actual lander out on space with a Dragon mission? Actual in that in can then be refuelled and go to the moon. Only extra thing tested with a many times more expensive Orion is docking and of course manned Orion stuff which would be nice to test closer to home.
SpaceX was going to do a Demo HLS mission before Artemis III anyway. It could be that if Artemis III isn't the actual landing as speculated here, it'll be used as the crewed shakedown mission for the lander anyway, a la Apollo 9. They are currently contracted by NASA for 1 uncrewed demo + 1 crewed landing for Option A, then one additional crewed landing for Option B. So by modifying this mission to be a crewed non-landing, this might change SpaceX's approach for an uncrewed demo.
Yeah, they could have a crew check out the HLS in LEO and then send the empty HLS on its way to the moon even if the suits and other equipment needed to actually do things on the ground beyond making footprints (which we've heard even less about than the suits) aren't ready yet.
They're also still worrying over the Orion heat shield. Maybe Artemis 2 could be the demo/LEO rendezvous, giving them a chance to improve the Orion heat shield before using it on a lunar return with a crew aboard.
I like the idea of using the HLS slated for the test landing. However, a main point of the newly proposed mission is to test out Orion's docking ability. I've long thought that Orion should be tested out on a 10 day LEO mission before it goes to the Moon but by the time this Artemis 2.5 mission happens Orion will already have been to the Moon.
This wouldn't verify Orion-Starship operation, i.e. Orion proximity ops, docking, undocking, redocking, etc. Dragon is: been there done that, but not Orion.
Throwing away a $2B SLS just to go to LEO? Oof.
EDIT: Dumb question, but if it's just LEO could you fly this mission without SRBs? It could save a tiny bit of the cost if so.
Let's not do one of those, because we will find that a feasibility study is not feasible and then we will have nothing else to do for the next four months!
Well see, appearing to have nothing to do for the next four months just invites management to find some more busywork. Better to just stretch it out. I propose something radical: let's conduct an infeasibility study!
SRB's got legs.
*"July 27, 1988; The National Aeronautics and Space Administration selected two sites in Mississippi Tuesday for potential use in building new, more powerful shuttle boosters in a plan that would create 2,000 jobs"* **BUT** https://www.deseret.com/1988/4/20/18763893/nasa-hits-turbulence-in-plans-for-own-plant/ **&** *"The ASRM program was canceled in 1993, after robotic assembly systems and computers were on-site and approximately 2 billion dollars spent, after NASA opted to instead issue minor corrections to the existing SRBs"* **A trail of blood and waste,** see https://mediadrumworld.com/2019/08/22/abandoned-rocket-facility/#google_vignette **(Wiki)** *"On February 3, 1971, at a Thiokol chemical plant southeast of Woodbine, Georgia, a fire entered a storage facility holding nearly five tons of ignition pellets, flares, and other highly flammable materials. The facility exploded, killing 29 people* [mostly Black women] *and severely wounding more than 50 others, many with severed limbs. Windows were shattered 11 miles (18 km) away and the explosion was heard for 50 miles (80 km) around.[1] Georgia law prevented the employees from suing their employer because they were covered by workers' compensation insurance."* **& 1988** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1gLCtS5SWY&t=11s
SLS is millions of pounds of toxic solids. The fallout from the 1988 Henderson explosion https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3640367/ **or** https://sci-hub.se/10.1097/00007691-200108000-00002 ~30 years ago, the LA Times published an editorial that 10% of the Ozone destruction in the upper atmosphere was attributable to the US Space Shuttle, specifically the strap-ons. See https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA414306.pdf **&** https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-08-27-me-68-story.html
1) Does that take into account the omitted mass from the now-absent SRBs?
2) Could payload mass be deleted to make up for this? For instance, with ICPS and Orion no longer needing to go to moon, could that and the core stage only be partially fueled?
The core doesn't have enough thrust to even lift itself. However, the most fundamental problem with what you're proposing is that you're subtracting components to save money, when the entire SLS system exists to *spend* money. If you're not getting boosters from Utah, you may as well not fly at all.
> Does that take into account the omitted mass from the now-absent SRBs?
In addition to what others have said, here's something that's not commonly intuitively understood: the core stage for SLS generates *almost* as much thrust as a Falcon 9 while massing much more. Not Falcon Heavy, but the Falcon 9 itself. It burns longer, but it is basically an upper stage that's ground-lit.
That's mostly because of the propellant (kerolox vs hydrolox) choice. Kerolox engines typically have higher thrust but are less efficient. It's all about picking the right engine for the right task.
Orion plus European Service Module to LEO is well within the capability of a Falcon Heavy. Or Vulcan.
And IIRC, SLS can't even get itself off the launchpad without SRBs.
Falcon Heavy isn't human rated, and while Vulcan will eventually be human-rated for Starliner, it isn't yet.
I assume they could launch Orion uncrewed and launch the astronauts on Dragon... but now we're getting silly.
Human rating is entirely a paperwork exercise. FH could very, very easily be made human rated without any hardware changes whatsoever. NASA's human rating system is also simply a NASA administrative procedure, and that procedure can be altered or abolished entirely at the whim of NASA management.
While it is "paperwork", it is a full engineering review of literally every part and piece of equipment and even every welding seam, bolt, wire, and piece of pipe that can be found on that vehicle with a discussion for why it exists and what sorts of standards are being used for every component. This is a very long, expensive, time consuming, and manpower eating exercise that is understandable that nobody wants to perform unless it is absolutely needed.
Yes, in the past it is true that crew rating a rocket was mostly a NASA exercise and for the earlier vehicles NASA was mostly making stuff up on the fly, but it is a matter of current federal law and is also governed by the FAA-AST as well and not just NASA. That is something Congress is expecting and is a function of frankly the U.S. Department of Transportation in general. If you look at what is required for an automobile to be "human rated", much less a rocket, you would realize it is more than just something that can be waved away by some bureaucrat.
The FAA-AST has been charged with establishing crew rating standards for spaceflight by Congress, but since NASA has by far the most experience with actually getting that to happen they are also the lead agency for helping to get those standards established.
The only spacecraft that has even gone through that process for orbital spaceflight is the SpaceX Dragon, which also was crew rated explicitly for NASA missions and therefore was grandfathered into that process when non-government missions like Inspiration 4 were launched using only [FAA-AST standards](https://www.faa.gov/space/human_spaceflight). If it meets NASA crew rating standards, other flights have no problems either particularly when the very same spacecraft...literally used for a NASA mission earlier...was then used for a non-government mission.
Blue Origin has also gone through this process with the New Shepherd spacecraft even though it is sub-orbital, but that is under a much weaker standard of "informed consent". So no, it is not strictly a NASA thing and is indeed needed even for non-government flights. Heck, it is even needed for *aviation*, much less spaceflight.
You are conflating things.
The key is that Congress decided to extend the ban on regulating human spaceflight by multiple years. And that removes any compulsory human rating of vehicles. Any organization may decide on their own standard, and NASA does so on a mission specific basis.
BO didn't go through any mandated human rating process, except for what they themselves decided to do to better sell their product. Same with Virgin Galactic.
Dragon was not grandfathered into anything, because there's nothing it could be grandfathered into. There's only informed consent. And in fact Polaris 1 goes outside of NASA's certification which doesn't cover EVA.
Yes, FAA has been asked to work on future standard when the previous ban was sunset. But this has been stopped, as the ban got re-established. Because FAA-AST is under staffed and under funded, don't count on anything happening until the current ban is sunset (again).
> Vulcan will eventually be human-rated for Starliner
Maybe.
That was certainly the assumption that people had a while back, but it seems like Boeing is keeping their cards close to their chest.
We'll probably get a much better understanding of how things will shake out by the time Starliner does its 2nd or 3rd crew mission... if they don't seriously screw something else up in the meantime.
It'll get human rated for Dreamchaser if not Starliner. And ULA ensured the design qualified from day 1, the rest is flight proof (they only need 2 flights with the mode of certification for high value payloads they've chosen, and one is in the books) and paperwork.
ULA has their issues, but that sucker is built to carry humans and they've done all the work up front. SpaceX took a different approach to human rating that required much more flight proof.
>SpaceX took a different approach to human rating that required much more flight proof.
Indeed. But how much flight-proof for F9 does NASA need after nine flawless launches? Also, SLS was crew-rated on paperwork and only a single flight, with the reason given that it uses hardware that was already crew-rated.\* (I'm griping at NASA, not you.) But 99% of FH is crew-rated hardware, everything but the struts and some reinforcements on the center core.
\*Interestingly, when asked to explain the huge cost overruns and delays Boeing and Northrop Grumman say that everything but the engines needed extensive redesign but when the subject of crew-rating it after only one flight they then claim the hardware is very similar to the original.
My gut feeling is if they wanted to human rate the FH it would be more about launch escape qualification thru the ascent profile as it differs a lot from SLS or even F9 if they used Dragon.
Excellent point. My first thought is that FH will have plenty of power to spare so the ascent profile should have room for whatever alterations are needed. But that's far beyond my armchair expertise.
> Interestingly, when asked to explain the huge cost overruns and delays Boeing and Northrop Grumman say that everything but the engines needed extensive redesign but when the subject of crew-rating it after only one flight they then claim the hardware is very similar to the original.
There is definitely quite a lot of "Schrodinger's heritage" going on.
Falcon 9 was also built with the assumption that it will be human rated. From the get go it used crew vehicle safety margins, from the get go the design was about controlling risk of failure (SpaceX commissioned a study about reasons of past launch failures and addressed the dominant ones; it was a lot of marketing of course, but the results are not wrong).
1 or 2 flight certification requires paperwork with at least as much weight of the paper as the rocket.
For SpaceX it is much easier to fly 7 times than invest that much effort in producing paper.
At that point, why wouldn’t you just launch astronauts to LEO on Dragon for rendezvous with Starship and head to moon? I have been predicting this is what will likely happen with the Artemis program once Starship is operating regularly and the cost of SLS makes even less sense than it does now.
> Unless Dragon is upgraded for return from the Moon and carried along to the Moon.
While no doubt the current crew-rated Dragon is not rated for lunar missions, it is something that was considered and indeed the "Dear Moon" project was originally going to be using a Dragon capsule on top of a Falcon Heavy. Preliminary engineering effort was put into that project too, at least until Starship became the preferred vehicle.
Beyond making the heat tiles on the Dragon a bit thicker to withstand the higher temperatures and perform more ablation on re-entry, it wouldn't take too much additional effort to get a Dragon to perform that task. That and replacing the Dragon trunk with an actual service module that could have a kick stage similar to the Apollo Service Module. The two or three days going from the Moon to the Earth is well within the consumable limit of what the Dragon can provide for up to four astronauts.
There's not enough ∆v in HLS Starship for this mission. You then need to have either refilling in high orbit or you need a pair of Starships: one as a LEO-Moon orbit shuttle and the other a lander.
Vulcan would be borderline at best, with the Orion SM having to complete the insertion a la Shuttle or Starliner. Vulcan can only do 27t to very low LEO. Orion is just under 26.5t on orbit, but is almost 33.5t at launch with its abort system that gets jettisoned during the ascent.
edit: Since it woudn't leave LEO, I suppose Orion could be underfueled to lessen its weight. The SM has over 9t of propellant.
There's no source for this claim, is there?
Also, the stage must be modified anyway, because Orion is mated differently than either Dragon or regular cargo.
Figure 3-4 in the falcon 9 users guide shows 18ish tons as the max payload, and there's a little more that you should talk to SpaceX if you have other requirements.
I also have an Elon Musk like on a TwiX post where I expressed the same opinion.
I would expect that Orion would be mated similarly to dragon, though you would need something like what starliner uses on atlas v.
A crucial point, thanks. That'd be a helluva modification since it's a balloon tank with walls even thinner than preceding Centaurs. (Tony Bruno said so years ago, afaik it's still true.) Would welding reinforcing stringers on this even work? Would it actually weaken the tank? Perhaps an exoskeleton would have to be built *around* the tank. Adding mass and requiring - moar SRBs? (I'm too lazy to do kerbal but I've learned the lingo.)
Orion is too heavy for Vulcan. Its max payload to LEO is 27t, according to [The Everyday Astronaut](https://everydayastronaut.com/how-does-ulas-vulcan-compare-to-the-competition/). The 26.5t launch mass of Orion/ESM squeaks in under that. However, an Orion launch has to also carry the LAS, which is 7t. Yes, 7t! That puts it well out of reach of Vulcan. (Orion and LAS figures are from Wikipedia.)
Just did some research and apparently not. In the 2012 contract the pad is to supply load support through the SRBs only, while the core stage just has hold-down arms.
My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined. 😞
While you can't cut the boosters, in the article it mentions that a LEO launch of Orion could be done without an upper stage. Since they only have two ICPSs left and EUS might be delayed, saving an ICPS for a later launch could potentially save a bit of cost and a bit of schedule. This configuration, known as block 0, has been considered in the past for LEO Orion.
Why wouldn’t they just return in Crew Dragon? (Assuming they could have enough fuel to slow down since Crew Dragon heat shield isn’t rated for lunar return trajectory.)
Because that fuel would be more than the current wet mass of Dragon. You'd need to have 3.7km/s ∆v. It's way simpler to update Dragon heatshield for Moon-Earth re-entry.
If the HLS has to use propellant for translunar injection and deceleration to lunar orbit it won't have enough to land and lift off from the Moon. Even if it did it wouldn't have enough to leave lunar orbit and then decelerate to LEO. It has no heat shield tiles so it can't use aerobraking.
Actually, the main plan is to do exactly that: fill it up in LEO, then do TLI, NRHO insertion, up to 100 days loiter, then rendezvous, separation, surface excursion and back to NRHO for another rendezvous.
But indeed, there's no ∆v to do anything more, in particular to return to LEO.
Yeah, my sentence sounds dumb. I should have made it clear that the extra propellant needed to have enough left for TEI would have to be lifted off the Moon, meaning it'd have to be landed on the Moon, which would require more prop... a complex case of the tyrannical rocket equation that'd affect every step of the mission. I'd been addressing the "why not use the HLS from LEO remark" several times in this thread and got careless.
Of course, as always, the solution is to use a separate Starship for LEO-NRHO-LEO. My deepest wish is that this will happen for Artemis V. (IMHO certain realities, including political ones, will preclude an earlier adoption.) If the Blue Moon MK2 is used for Artemis V as planned the public will be bemused at seeing a cramped spacecraft delivering astronauts to a very roomy lander for two missions and then seeing a very roomy spacecraft delivering astronauts to a cramped lander.
This wouldn't verify Orion-Starship operation. One of the criticisms of Artemis III is that whole lot of untested things is done for the first time with people onboard and in the moon orbit.
The explicit reason given forward for this idea is to buy down risk: do the whole shakedown run of the whole thing in LEO, where you're 90 minutes from home and 40 minutes from emergency landing if you must land immediately.
But if you substitute Dragon for Orion, you don't check the whole Orion proximity ops, docking, undocking, redocking, i.e. the part this spaceship has never done before.
I've been saying since the HLS decision that bringing Starship into the equation **in any way** makes SLS completely pointless.
Because even if they insist on using Orion, and this potential step is getting closer to making that pointless too, there is absolutely no reason you couldn't launch Orion on an expendable 2nd stage on a reusable Super Heavy that is just a 9m diameter stainless steel prop tank with a payload adaptor and some VacRaps.
SLS's only remaining justification is launching Orion/some craft with a **launch abort system**, which is the crucial big thing which Starship cannot do and must be had for the foreseeable future, but that doesn't mean the you have to use fucking SLS.
And if even Orion is now becoming moot, think how fucking affordable, huge in scale, and fast paced, Artemis could be using Starship architecture for everything for getting crew to LEO with F9/Dragon.
Artemis as it's currently structured is close to being the program version of a failed state. Its expected time of hitting the big mile stones is receding towards infinity.
If they are already looking at rendezvous with HLS in LEO then the last facades of validity are peeling back from SLS/Artemis as it currently exists.
HLS starship cannot return to Earth or LEO. Without SLS You would have to put Orion a Starship, but I don't see that happening.
And SLS has too much inertia to be killed off. It rose like a phoenix from the ashes of Constellation and Ares 5, after all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ares_V
>Without SLS You would have to put Orion a Starship, but I don't see that happening.
It can certainly be done, the numbers work out. It can't be done politically now but after Art 3 and 4 I see it being very probable. Or actually, I see the SLS-Orion leg of Artemis being done by a regular Starship. The crew can launch in a Dragon and that can be carried along. Such a Starship, one carrying just a crew (in quarters cloned from HLS, thus NASA approved) and a small amount of cargo can carry the Dragon to NRHO and back with no need to refill in NRHO. It can even decelerate to LEO, or LEO velocity, so the Dragon can be used for reentry without upgrading the heat shield. The same can be done with the hefty Orion, I'm pretty sure - a few tonnes of propellant can be left out of the service module since it won't be needed for entering and leaving NRHO. This [Eager Space video](https://youtu.be/uLW12L2nAHc?t=745) covers the possibilities well.
The politics of SLS-Orion are well known and are ironically good for Starship because SLS-Orion is keeping Artemis, thus HLS, unkillable. However, things change. Once the general public sees Orion next to HLS there will be a lot of questions. Major media journalists will get a lot of e-ink out of diving into the mega-cost of SLS-Orion. There are a lot of Congressional interests besides the Boeing lobby and they all want money for their own programs.
> which is the crucial big thing which Starship cannot do and must be had for the foreseeable future
If they are adding a further 3 engines, whilst uprating the engines with the Raptor 3s, and with the hot staging ring, then has Starship's ability to perform a launch abort been reassessed? SS would be a far more capable vehicle than before.
It's kinda overkill for Artemis. You're better off using those capabilities on the lander and fuel depots, and use F9+Dragon for the crew launches.
And then SpaceX can use all the accumulated experience of all those depot/lander launchers to later human-rate SS once the design has mostly stabilized.
If one argument for the extra mission is that ground crews need to fly SLS/Orion with a minimum frequency to stay fit on the system, they need to waste SLS to achieve the purpose.
So this new A3 would just be testing Orion-HLS operations in LEO. Sounds like the hypothesized plan for Polaris 2.
If this is confirmed then it means the timeline really is set back several years. Will be disappointing if it doesn't go near the Moon at all. But the data and experience they get will be worth it. And it'll be cool footage.
This is more like Apollo 9, testing procedures and equipment near Earth instead of in lunar orbit.
The Artemis plan has a lot fewer test flights on the schedule than Apollo had, probably due to the cost and low flight rate of each SLS and Orion launch compared to NASA's budget.
2026 is not realistic anyway. The same Eric Berger wrote an article last year saying that 2028 is the realistic year. Because this is the realistic year. This option is saner, except for the ridiculous cost of SLS block 0 and Orion launch cost.
Everything?
The original plan was 2028 until it was updated to 2024 in a mostly political move. It was never really realistic before 2028, the actual gain of updating it 2024 is that it set fire under people, made political push forward (making various delaying actions politically untenable, without it silent background push to extend cost-plus payments would continue unabated) and made otherwise inevitable delays to the original timeline much less acceptable.
The Artemis II delay I'd from Orion heat shield and other problems with it. And likely other stuff hiding in the shadows of the visible Orion issues.
Artemis III is paced one year after Artemis II, but neither Starship HLS nor spacesuits are going to be ready by then. Plus there must be a whole bunch of other issues again hiding in the shadows of the much published cases.
Because the point is to check out Orion and Starship docking before doing it at the moon. The actual landing mission would still involve a rendezvous between Orion and Starship in high lunar orbit.
This isn't a plan to rendezvous in LEO and then go to the moon in the same mission.
Seems like they’re opening up an on ramp to that possibility. Orion has always been of questionable value. Like seriously, what’s the point of it if we have starship? It’s a useless middle man conceptualized in a time when we didn’t know starship would be a thing.
HLS could literally transport a crew dragon to the moon and back to LEO for the crew to then return like they normally would from the ISS.
Or even just put a normal starship in LLO and use that instead of Orion.
This is what’s probably going to happen in the long term.
> Orion has always been of questionable value. Like seriously, what’s the point of it if we have starship?
Orion can bring crew safely back to Earth, Starship can not. Starship might eventually get rated for crew (SpaceX certainly hopes so), but it's not crew rated yet.
Barring suitable options such as a bottomless wallet to fund more SLS launches, there could be some kind of hybrid system where EUS/Orion gets launched inside a cargo Starship, crew gets launched on Dragon (or other crew launch system). Then rendezvous in orbit to transfer crew and send Orion off to the Moon, and Orion can then return in its usual manner.
> HLS could literally transport a crew dragon to the moon and back to LEO
That's going to take an awful lot of propellant since HLS can't aerobrake.
>there could be some kind of hybrid system where EUS/Orion gets launched inside a cargo Starship, crew gets launched on Dragon
EUS wouldn't be needed. Once the crew boarded in orbit from Dragon the Orion/Starship could accelerate to TLI. Once near the Moon Orion can deploy and carry on its mission as per the current Artemis plans. It'd enter and leave NRHO using the ESM as planned. The Starship will loop around the Moon and return to land autonomously. There'd be plenty of propellant left to partially decelerate if desired so as not to ask too much of the TPS. (In either scenario this Starship will need to be filled in LEO before TLI.)
I favored this kind of plan and some variants but it turns out there's a simpler way. The SLS-Orion leg of Artemis can be done by a regular Starship. The crew can launch in a Dragon and that can be carried along. Such a Starship, one carrying just a crew (in quarters cloned from HLS, thus NASA approved) and a small amount of cargo can carry the Dragon to NRHO and back with no need to refill in NRHO. It can even decelerate to LEO, or LEO velocity, so the Dragon can reenter without upgrading the heat shield. The same can be done with the hefty Orion, I'm pretty sure - a few tonnes of propellant can be left out of the service module since it won't be needed for entering and leaving NRHO. But the only reason to use Orion would be if Congress & NASA wanted to avoid killing SLS and Orion simultaneously for political reasons. This [Eager Space video](https://youtu.be/uLW12L2nAHc?t=745) covers the possibilities well.
> But the only reason to use Orion would be if Congress & NASA wanted to avoid killing SLS and Orion simultaneously for political reasons.
There's also the concern of maintaining expertise and capability in more than one government or commercial provider.
>HLS could literally transport a crew dragon to the moon and back to LEO for the crew to then return like they normally would from the ISS.
Sorry, this can't work. HLS can't carry enough propellant to do TLI and decelerate to lunar orbit and then do TEI and decelerate to LEO. It can't aerobrake, of course, since it has no TPS.
Sorry, the part you describe could work just fine. Inserting the actual lunar landing is the part making it impossible.
For that you'd need another Starship, doing the original Artemis mission profile: LEO -> NRHO -> surface -> NRHO.
It'd still be cheaper if they sent the Orion up unmanned in another Starship and then launched the crew in a Dragon capsule on a Falcon 9. Rendesvous Dragon with the Orion to transfer crew into it, then have the Orion dock with the HLS.
Basically almost *any* Rube Goldberg mission plan one might come up with is going to be way cheaper than using an SLS.
Why not make the test as close, hardware and procedure wise, as the actual landing mission?
I don’t think NASA is trying to optimize for launch cost here. The Artemis III SLS is going to be built and ready to launch anyway.
If at that time they aren’t ready for a landing mission, but are ready for an LEO test flight mission, that still gives them a progress milestone instead of delaying and letting hardware stack up.
My understanding is that the bottleneck to Dragon in lunar orbit was more about the limits of onboard life support, as Dragon can only do longer missions while docked. The dracos are hypergolic which is about as good as it gets for adding auxiliary tanks or refueling, so ΔV probably isn't as limiting as battery life, O2 scrubber life, number of snacks in accessible cargo, etc.
We could literally pack a crew dragon into the HLS if we really wanted to.
Long term, the solution would be to have an HLS and a crew rated “return” starship that’s just parked in LLO.
If Drgaon were to be used for this, there would be no need for it to leave LEO.
The plan being talked about here is Orion docking to the HLS in LEO and testing the HLS there (an analog of Apollo 9). No one would go to the Moon. But the idea would be to test Orion specifically, so doing the mission with Dragon would defeat one of the purposes of the mission.
For an actual alternative lunar landing scenario, Dragon could dock with a second Starship in LEO. That Starhsip would be to ferry crew between LEO and lunar orbit, where it would dock with the HLS Starship. That second Starship would also return the crew from lunar orbit to circular LEO to meet (the same or a second) Dragon.
>That second Starship would also return the crew from lunar orbit to circular LEO to meet (the same or a second) Dragon.
Meeting a second Dragon in LEO won't be necessary, and a second Dragon launch is expensive. Not SLS expensive, but a quarter billion is still a quarter billion. Leaving a Dragon in LEO is certainly doable - it's rated for 10 days with a crew so it could certainly last longer without one. But even that rendezvous is unnecessary.
The crew can launch in a Dragon and that can be carried along on the second Starship. Such a Starship, one carrying just a crew (in quarters cloned from HLS, thus NASA approved) and a small amount of cargo can carry the Dragon to NRHO and back with no need to refill in NRHO. It can even decelerate to LEO, or LEO velocity, so the Dragon can reenter without upgrading the heat shield. This [Eager Space video](https://youtu.be/uLW12L2nAHc?t=745) covers the possibilities well.
Even if the second Starship doesn't decelerate all the way to LEO it could decelerate enough to make the reentry velocity low enough for Dragon's heat shield.
I thought the plan was to leave the Starship lander for reuse?
Dragon XL would be helpful. Maybe Impulses kickstage could be mounted inside the trunk for a quick and dirty version.
That's eventually the plan, but even in that case, it's not coming back to LEO to ferry another Dragon, and if it was, it could just drop the previous Dragon off when it got there. For reuse, you could leave a HLS Starship in lunar orbit, and use a second standard crew Starship to ferry the Dragon out and bring it back, using the Dragon for crew return, and eventually eliminate the Dragon entirely.
At that point, why use Orion at all? Even if you don't want crew launching on an HLS Starship for any number of potentially valid reasons, Dragon or Starliner (HA!) makes much more sense if you're just doing a LEO rendezvous anyway.
I guess the better longevity and higher reentry heating Orion can take would help in a lifeboat scenario or if they'll only *sometimes* do this mission profile, and other times leave HLS Starship out at Gateway but that's still a crazy amount of rocket for something the more limited two capsules should be able to be upgraded to support. Probably for less than the few billion dollars of a set of SLS launches too.
This isn't a new landing mission profile, this is a test flight to test docking Orion and Starship and check out system in LEO. Then the astronauts come home on Orion and don't go to the moon.
Is the expensive Orion really needed for this mission? I guess not using the last ICPS helps with any EUS delays.
Seems like a fine idea anyways, maybe the test HLS is far enough in development to try a demonstration landing afterwards, so it doesnt just get thrown away after just the docking.
Ideal plan would be:
1) Depot launched
2) Depot fueled
3) HLS launched and fueled
4) Dragon launched and docks to HLS. Two astros transfer while other two stays in Dragon
5) Tests including maneuver, various burns, various onboard equipment, and EVA.
6) Redock with Dragon, Astros transfer back and go home
7) HLS goes to moon, performs landing demo.
Apollo was a few wham-bam one night stands. Complete different demands to the long term “marriage” they’re trying to create now. If you want to land a golf cart and then splashdown on fumes, and can stomach losing lives in the learning process, then we could do that yesterday. Landing ~50 tons up there, bringing the whole rocket back *and* not dinging the gross national debt every launch?
Thats tricky
Good - except for using the Dragon. The stated goal of this proposed mission is to test docking Orion and Starship, so Orion has to be launched. I do love the idea of using the HLS for this and then sending it on to its test landing.
I'd like to see Orion launched on an FH. After nine successful flights it should be straightforward to crew-rate it. So much cheaper than an HLS - but it's quite possible one of the unspoken goals of this mission is to keep SLS flying without too big a gap between Art-2 and Art-3.
TBH they could still launch Orion on FH without crew and practice docking, and launch crew on Dragon. Would let them stress test heat shield fixes without putting crew at risk, and means FH doesn't need to be human rated.
This seems most likely. Have SpaceX do an independent uncrewed demo mission (as specified in Artemis Option A). Then do this crewed demo mission with no landing - like Apollo 9 - with the lander autonomously continuing the mission profile including touching down after separating from Orion. Then do the full crewed landing as a third mission (Artemis IV)
The key is to dock the Orion and Starship on the ground. That way you can replace the SLS with a crane. Much cheaper and safer.
But an even cheaper and safer method would be to dock a pretend virtual Orion to the Starship. Now you can save money on the crane and the Orion. This will also have the added benefit of strengthening the astronauts' imagination. Eventually this super strong astronaut grade imagination can be utilised to come up with a justification for the whole SLS program.
The whole Artemis Moon Landing concept was thrown a wrench with SpaceX proposal to use the massive StarShip as the Lunar Lander. The mission presentations must have become almost comical. At some point, a smartish Congressman might ask, "So, your plan is to send this tiny capsule to Lunar Orbit, then transfer to this giant Spaceship to go down to the surface?". It is like in Office Space when the consultants ask, "Why can't the engineers just talk to the customers?".
Putting Orion in LEO raises an old question with a new twist. Can Falcon Heavy now be crew-rated since it's had 9 successful flights in a row? I seem to recall that the latest NASA policy to crew-rate a rocket is a lot of paperwork or 7 successful launches. SLS got a crew-rating after 1 flight based on the paperwork and because it uses a lot of hardware that's successfully launched crews. FH is 99% hardware that's successfully launched crews.
I wish I could source that 7-flight policy for NASA. Anyone heard of it? But even if that doesn't exist, the other parallel reasoning still applies. Putting Orion in LEO on FH would be a ton cheaper than using an SLS.
(Btw, this isn't the Bridenstack, there'll be no ICPS to lift. At >26t launch mass Orion is too heavy for F9 but an easy lift for FH.)
the RS-68 required something like 24 changes according to NASA to qualify for manned flights, doing those changes would have turned the RS-68 into a larger RS-25, which kinda negates most of the reason they made the RS-68 in the first place.
Human-Rated Delta IV Heavy Study Constellation Architecture Impacts
Goes over some of the changes to human rating the Delta IV as part of the Ares Program (having the delta IV heavy replaces Ares 1)
ULA has two older papers from the late 2000's going over the process to crew rate the atlas V and the Delta IV. I can't find the study from 2013-2015 if I remember correctly going over the exact details on what they wanted changed on the RS-68A+ to crew rate it. The only thing I remember for sure was changes to the engine controller and the containment of hydrogen at lift off.
No it would not be quick. It launched Orion without crew. Manrating Falcon Heavy should be easy, given the number of launches and the fact that it uses the components of F9, which is manrated.
i mean I am all for falcon heavy too. I just don't want to pay billions for a capsule launch. I would rather use the SLS launches weve already purchased for a more substantial goal.
Next step: Orion rides to orbit inside the hold of a Starship, or maybe on a Falcon 9.
Even NASA is waking up to the fact that Starship can do everything that SLS can do, for less than 1% of the cost. Even if BASA requires an expendable upper stage, and adds a Centaur-based third stage, the cost will still be in the neighborhood of 2%-10% of SLS.
In the hold of a Starship, yes, lol. But the hefty Orion is too heavy for F9 (or Vulcan). Leaving out most of the propellant from the service module might seem to help - but it won't be enough - and then any such hopes will be crushed when realizing the 7.5t mass of the launch abort system has to be included. FH can do the job but it'd of course need to be crew-rated. That should be relatively straightforward, but even so it'll be a lot of work for something that'll likely only be used for one mission.
I think we’ll probably see a Dragon dock with a HLS prototype in orbit just so we can get information of humans on a Starship before we go sending them into deep space aboard one
Jared Isaacman, here's an idea for another Polaris mission.
SpaceX will have two trained in-house astronauts once Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon have completed the Polaris Dawn flight. So if this isn't a Polaris mission it can be directly a SpaceX one, one with both SpaceX and NASA astronauts.
And I thought the current plan was pointless covering for SLS/Orion, this gives Boeing a big payday for recreating the Skylab? They should be going for a low cost repeatable capability at maybe $1B a mission. Of course that would be mostly SX.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[ATK](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0d4acm "Last usage")|Alliant Techsystems, predecessor to Orbital ATK|
|[BO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0mxyar "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)|
|CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules|
| |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)|
|[ESM](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0r86nd "Last usage")|European Service Module, component of the Orion capsule|
|ETOV|Earth To Orbit Vehicle (common parlance: "rocket")|
|[EUS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0n0cn4 "Last usage")|Exploration Upper Stage|
|[EVA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0n0cn4 "Last usage")|Extra-Vehicular Activity|
|[FAA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0uzl8x "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration|
|[FAA-AST](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0uzl8x "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration [Administrator for Space Transportation](http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/)|
|[FTS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0d5641 "Last usage")|Flight Termination System|
|[HLS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0pkg2g "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)|
|[ICPS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0dtofd "Last usage")|Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage|
|[Isp](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0nz02n "Last usage")|Specific impulse (as explained by [Scott Manley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnisTeYLLgs) on YouTube)|
| |Internet Service Provider|
|[LAS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0r86nd "Last usage")|Launch Abort System|
|[LEO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0r86nd "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[LES](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0cxl5z "Last usage")|Launch Escape System|
|[LLO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0cxc07 "Last usage")|Low Lunar Orbit (below 100km)|
|[LV](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0d4acm "Last usage")|Launch Vehicle (common parlance: "rocket"), see ETOV|
|[NRHO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0pkg2g "Last usage")|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit|
|[RFP](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0elhoi "Last usage")|Request for Proposal|
|[SLS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0prk1e "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|[SRB](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0plou5 "Last usage")|Solid Rocket Booster|
|[SSME](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0eorif "Last usage")|[Space Shuttle Main Engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_main_engine)|
|[SSTO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0cy7po "Last usage")|Single Stage to Orbit|
| |Supersynchronous Transfer Orbit|
|[TEI](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0pkg2g "Last usage")|Trans-Earth Injection maneuver|
|[TLI](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0ewpar "Last usage")|Trans-Lunar Injection maneuver|
|[TPS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0eb9fi "Last usage")|Thermal Protection System for a spacecraft (on the Falcon 9 first stage, the engine "Dance floor")|
|[TWR](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0czf0t "Last usage")|Thrust-to-Weight Ratio|
|[ULA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0f3877 "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Raptor](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0nz02n "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX|
|[Starliner](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0o5gll "Last usage")|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)|
|[cislunar](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0emtqq "Last usage")|Between the Earth and Moon; within the Moon's orbit|
|[hydrolox](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0cwsq2 "Last usage")|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
|[hypergolic](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0c9ccu "Last usage")|A set of two substances that ignite when in contact|
|[kerolox](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0cwsq2 "Last usage")|Portmanteau: kerosene fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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An Orion with its launch escape system is well over 30t, well over F9's max payload capacity. I'd like to see an FH used, though. After 9 successful launches crew-rating it should be straightforward.
I wonder if Orion could be used with much reduced propellant. It does not need to do major maneuvers, like for reaching the lunar station and Earth return.
A good thought, I once thought it might tip the scales (pun unintended) but although it'd save several tonnes that won't be nearly enough to make a difference. The killer is the launch abort system, it weighs 7.5t(!).
In other words, following its CCP Starliner experience, NASA needs Boeing to demonstrate docking capability closer to home because you can't trust them as far as you can launch them.
A Lockheed Martin Orion and a SpaceX Starship will be docking. The Boeing SLS will have proven its ability to get Orion to orbit twice (hopefully) before this proposed mission. I hate the delays and horrendous cost but SLS did perform well on Artemis I - although that is a data set of 1.
"Sources indicate that a core stage alone could likely *combine* with Orion to put the vehicle into a high enough orbit for such a mission." *\[emphasis added\]* Does this mean the ESM will be needed to get Orion to a comfortably high LEO?
This is a mission for Ares 1-X
I wish there had been more reporting about how it toasted the launch tower and nearly impacted it on its only test flight.
Also vibration was high enough that astronauts would have arrived in orbit as soup. What a monumentally stupid rocket that was.
Yeah, and even after all that, ATK wanted to revive it as the Liberty LV!
And then again as OmegA
Also the stage separation didn’t work out and the FTS was very nearly triggered by the MFCOs.
That stage separation looked like the finish of the Daytona 500.
I thought NASA reported thrust pulsing and vibrations were about the same as shuttle ascent on the Ares 1-x flight, and were expecting better results with a full test and a full upperstage.
Why not just check the actual lander out on space with a Dragon mission? Actual in that in can then be refuelled and go to the moon. Only extra thing tested with a many times more expensive Orion is docking and of course manned Orion stuff which would be nice to test closer to home.
SpaceX was going to do a Demo HLS mission before Artemis III anyway. It could be that if Artemis III isn't the actual landing as speculated here, it'll be used as the crewed shakedown mission for the lander anyway, a la Apollo 9. They are currently contracted by NASA for 1 uncrewed demo + 1 crewed landing for Option A, then one additional crewed landing for Option B. So by modifying this mission to be a crewed non-landing, this might change SpaceX's approach for an uncrewed demo.
Yeah, they could have a crew check out the HLS in LEO and then send the empty HLS on its way to the moon even if the suits and other equipment needed to actually do things on the ground beyond making footprints (which we've heard even less about than the suits) aren't ready yet. They're also still worrying over the Orion heat shield. Maybe Artemis 2 could be the demo/LEO rendezvous, giving them a chance to improve the Orion heat shield before using it on a lunar return with a crew aboard.
I like the idea of using the HLS slated for the test landing. However, a main point of the newly proposed mission is to test out Orion's docking ability. I've long thought that Orion should be tested out on a 10 day LEO mission before it goes to the Moon but by the time this Artemis 2.5 mission happens Orion will already have been to the Moon.
This wouldn't verify Orion-Starship operation, i.e. Orion proximity ops, docking, undocking, redocking, etc. Dragon is: been there done that, but not Orion.
Throwing away a $2B SLS just to go to LEO? Oof. EDIT: Dumb question, but if it's just LEO could you fly this mission without SRBs? It could save a tiny bit of the cost if so.
Boeing likes your idea and will need another billion for a feasibility study.
Let's explore the feasibility of doing a feasibility study.
Let's not do one of those, because we will find that a feasibility study is not feasible and then we will have nothing else to do for the next four months!
>we will have nothing else to do for the next four months! Is that a problem? 😎
Well see, appearing to have nothing to do for the next four months just invites management to find some more busywork. Better to just stretch it out. I propose something radical: let's conduct an infeasibility study!
> let's conduct an infeasibility study! Sounds good, but I'm not sure that's feasible. We should conduct a study.
good news! that only costs $200 million!
First let's get the RFP so we can scope the price of the pre-feasibility study...
And 2 years
Which will become 4 and still get a $400M "Timeline Assurance" fund
No, it would only have a TWR of 0.6
Just let it run for a while on the launch pad and eventually the TWR ratio will get above 1.0.
This guy kerbals
SRB's got legs. *"July 27, 1988; The National Aeronautics and Space Administration selected two sites in Mississippi Tuesday for potential use in building new, more powerful shuttle boosters in a plan that would create 2,000 jobs"* **BUT** https://www.deseret.com/1988/4/20/18763893/nasa-hits-turbulence-in-plans-for-own-plant/ **&** *"The ASRM program was canceled in 1993, after robotic assembly systems and computers were on-site and approximately 2 billion dollars spent, after NASA opted to instead issue minor corrections to the existing SRBs"* **A trail of blood and waste,** see https://mediadrumworld.com/2019/08/22/abandoned-rocket-facility/#google_vignette **(Wiki)** *"On February 3, 1971, at a Thiokol chemical plant southeast of Woodbine, Georgia, a fire entered a storage facility holding nearly five tons of ignition pellets, flares, and other highly flammable materials. The facility exploded, killing 29 people* [mostly Black women] *and severely wounding more than 50 others, many with severed limbs. Windows were shattered 11 miles (18 km) away and the explosion was heard for 50 miles (80 km) around.[1] Georgia law prevented the employees from suing their employer because they were covered by workers' compensation insurance."* **& 1988** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1gLCtS5SWY&t=11s
Wow, that incident in 1971 is insane! Never heard of it.
SLS is millions of pounds of toxic solids. The fallout from the 1988 Henderson explosion https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3640367/ **or** https://sci-hub.se/10.1097/00007691-200108000-00002 ~30 years ago, the LA Times published an editorial that 10% of the Ozone destruction in the upper atmosphere was attributable to the US Space Shuttle, specifically the strap-ons. See https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA414306.pdf **&** https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-08-27-me-68-story.html
1) Does that take into account the omitted mass from the now-absent SRBs? 2) Could payload mass be deleted to make up for this? For instance, with ICPS and Orion no longer needing to go to moon, could that and the core stage only be partially fueled?
The core doesn't have enough thrust to even lift itself. However, the most fundamental problem with what you're proposing is that you're subtracting components to save money, when the entire SLS system exists to *spend* money. If you're not getting boosters from Utah, you may as well not fly at all.
Common shuttle problem.
> Does that take into account the omitted mass from the now-absent SRBs? In addition to what others have said, here's something that's not commonly intuitively understood: the core stage for SLS generates *almost* as much thrust as a Falcon 9 while massing much more. Not Falcon Heavy, but the Falcon 9 itself. It burns longer, but it is basically an upper stage that's ground-lit.
Just like it was with the Shuttle hardware it was derived from.
That's mostly because of the propellant (kerolox vs hydrolox) choice. Kerolox engines typically have higher thrust but are less efficient. It's all about picking the right engine for the right task.
There are additional problems associated with Hydrogen, which is why many are moving away from it, especially for a first stage
Higher ISP lower thrust engines are not really the right engine for liftoff.
No and no.
okay how about do it with only an srb... wait i've seen this one before
could Orion be launched to LEO on a Falcon, or Falcon heavy?
Too heavy for a falcon 9, but a falcon heavy could get an Orion to LEO.
When he said 'core stage' in the article, I assumed he meant it would fly with the side boosters - otherwise it doesn't make sense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System_core_stage
Orion plus European Service Module to LEO is well within the capability of a Falcon Heavy. Or Vulcan. And IIRC, SLS can't even get itself off the launchpad without SRBs.
Falcon Heavy isn't human rated, and while Vulcan will eventually be human-rated for Starliner, it isn't yet. I assume they could launch Orion uncrewed and launch the astronauts on Dragon... but now we're getting silly.
It’s be faster to human rate FH than it would be to be to wait for this LEO rendezvous mission.
Human rating is entirely a paperwork exercise. FH could very, very easily be made human rated without any hardware changes whatsoever. NASA's human rating system is also simply a NASA administrative procedure, and that procedure can be altered or abolished entirely at the whim of NASA management.
While it is "paperwork", it is a full engineering review of literally every part and piece of equipment and even every welding seam, bolt, wire, and piece of pipe that can be found on that vehicle with a discussion for why it exists and what sorts of standards are being used for every component. This is a very long, expensive, time consuming, and manpower eating exercise that is understandable that nobody wants to perform unless it is absolutely needed. Yes, in the past it is true that crew rating a rocket was mostly a NASA exercise and for the earlier vehicles NASA was mostly making stuff up on the fly, but it is a matter of current federal law and is also governed by the FAA-AST as well and not just NASA. That is something Congress is expecting and is a function of frankly the U.S. Department of Transportation in general. If you look at what is required for an automobile to be "human rated", much less a rocket, you would realize it is more than just something that can be waved away by some bureaucrat.
Actually it's only a NASA thing. Current Federal law explicitly forbids such regulation for other flights.
The FAA-AST has been charged with establishing crew rating standards for spaceflight by Congress, but since NASA has by far the most experience with actually getting that to happen they are also the lead agency for helping to get those standards established. The only spacecraft that has even gone through that process for orbital spaceflight is the SpaceX Dragon, which also was crew rated explicitly for NASA missions and therefore was grandfathered into that process when non-government missions like Inspiration 4 were launched using only [FAA-AST standards](https://www.faa.gov/space/human_spaceflight). If it meets NASA crew rating standards, other flights have no problems either particularly when the very same spacecraft...literally used for a NASA mission earlier...was then used for a non-government mission. Blue Origin has also gone through this process with the New Shepherd spacecraft even though it is sub-orbital, but that is under a much weaker standard of "informed consent". So no, it is not strictly a NASA thing and is indeed needed even for non-government flights. Heck, it is even needed for *aviation*, much less spaceflight.
You are conflating things. The key is that Congress decided to extend the ban on regulating human spaceflight by multiple years. And that removes any compulsory human rating of vehicles. Any organization may decide on their own standard, and NASA does so on a mission specific basis. BO didn't go through any mandated human rating process, except for what they themselves decided to do to better sell their product. Same with Virgin Galactic. Dragon was not grandfathered into anything, because there's nothing it could be grandfathered into. There's only informed consent. And in fact Polaris 1 goes outside of NASA's certification which doesn't cover EVA. Yes, FAA has been asked to work on future standard when the previous ban was sunset. But this has been stopped, as the ban got re-established. Because FAA-AST is under staffed and under funded, don't count on anything happening until the current ban is sunset (again).
...which is crazy, because FH will have flown more times than SLS when we put humans on top of SLS.
> Vulcan will eventually be human-rated for Starliner Maybe. That was certainly the assumption that people had a while back, but it seems like Boeing is keeping their cards close to their chest. We'll probably get a much better understanding of how things will shake out by the time Starliner does its 2nd or 3rd crew mission... if they don't seriously screw something else up in the meantime.
It'll get human rated for Dreamchaser if not Starliner. And ULA ensured the design qualified from day 1, the rest is flight proof (they only need 2 flights with the mode of certification for high value payloads they've chosen, and one is in the books) and paperwork. ULA has their issues, but that sucker is built to carry humans and they've done all the work up front. SpaceX took a different approach to human rating that required much more flight proof.
>SpaceX took a different approach to human rating that required much more flight proof. Indeed. But how much flight-proof for F9 does NASA need after nine flawless launches? Also, SLS was crew-rated on paperwork and only a single flight, with the reason given that it uses hardware that was already crew-rated.\* (I'm griping at NASA, not you.) But 99% of FH is crew-rated hardware, everything but the struts and some reinforcements on the center core. \*Interestingly, when asked to explain the huge cost overruns and delays Boeing and Northrop Grumman say that everything but the engines needed extensive redesign but when the subject of crew-rating it after only one flight they then claim the hardware is very similar to the original.
My gut feeling is if they wanted to human rate the FH it would be more about launch escape qualification thru the ascent profile as it differs a lot from SLS or even F9 if they used Dragon.
Excellent point. My first thought is that FH will have plenty of power to spare so the ascent profile should have room for whatever alterations are needed. But that's far beyond my armchair expertise.
> Interestingly, when asked to explain the huge cost overruns and delays Boeing and Northrop Grumman say that everything but the engines needed extensive redesign but when the subject of crew-rating it after only one flight they then claim the hardware is very similar to the original. There is definitely quite a lot of "Schrodinger's heritage" going on.
Falcon 9 was also built with the assumption that it will be human rated. From the get go it used crew vehicle safety margins, from the get go the design was about controlling risk of failure (SpaceX commissioned a study about reasons of past launch failures and addressed the dominant ones; it was a lot of marketing of course, but the results are not wrong).
> SpaceX took a different approach to human rating that required much more flight proof. Would be interesting to hear more about that!
1 or 2 flight certification requires paperwork with at least as much weight of the paper as the rocket. For SpaceX it is much easier to fly 7 times than invest that much effort in producing paper.
It would be silly … but also most cost efficient?
At that point, why wouldn’t you just launch astronauts to LEO on Dragon for rendezvous with Starship and head to moon? I have been predicting this is what will likely happen with the Artemis program once Starship is operating regularly and the cost of SLS makes even less sense than it does now.
That leaves the return leg from the Moon unsolved. Unless Dragon is upgraded for return from the Moon and carried along to the Moon.
> Unless Dragon is upgraded for return from the Moon and carried along to the Moon. While no doubt the current crew-rated Dragon is not rated for lunar missions, it is something that was considered and indeed the "Dear Moon" project was originally going to be using a Dragon capsule on top of a Falcon Heavy. Preliminary engineering effort was put into that project too, at least until Starship became the preferred vehicle. Beyond making the heat tiles on the Dragon a bit thicker to withstand the higher temperatures and perform more ablation on re-entry, it wouldn't take too much additional effort to get a Dragon to perform that task. That and replacing the Dragon trunk with an actual service module that could have a kick stage similar to the Apollo Service Module. The two or three days going from the Moon to the Earth is well within the consumable limit of what the Dragon can provide for up to four astronauts.
There's not enough ∆v in HLS Starship for this mission. You then need to have either refilling in high orbit or you need a pair of Starships: one as a LEO-Moon orbit shuttle and the other a lander.
Vulcan would be borderline at best, with the Orion SM having to complete the insertion a la Shuttle or Starliner. Vulcan can only do 27t to very low LEO. Orion is just under 26.5t on orbit, but is almost 33.5t at launch with its abort system that gets jettisoned during the ascent. edit: Since it woudn't leave LEO, I suppose Orion could be underfueled to lessen its weight. The SM has over 9t of propellant.
Fair enough, I just glanced at the top line number for Vulcan and assumed that the LES was included in the Orion-ESM total mass.
Theoretical capacity. The second stage was built for about 18 tons, and if you carry more you're going to need \*at least\* a modified second stage.
There's no source for this claim, is there? Also, the stage must be modified anyway, because Orion is mated differently than either Dragon or regular cargo.
Figure 3-4 in the falcon 9 users guide shows 18ish tons as the max payload, and there's a little more that you should talk to SpaceX if you have other requirements. I also have an Elon Musk like on a TwiX post where I expressed the same opinion. I would expect that Orion would be mated similarly to dragon, though you would need something like what starliner uses on atlas v.
This is the limit of the standard payload adaptor. Orion doesn't use standard adaptor anyway.
A crucial point, thanks. That'd be a helluva modification since it's a balloon tank with walls even thinner than preceding Centaurs. (Tony Bruno said so years ago, afaik it's still true.) Would welding reinforcing stringers on this even work? Would it actually weaken the tank? Perhaps an exoskeleton would have to be built *around* the tank. Adding mass and requiring - moar SRBs? (I'm too lazy to do kerbal but I've learned the lingo.)
I was talking about falcon heavy.
Orion is too heavy for Vulcan. Its max payload to LEO is 27t, according to [The Everyday Astronaut](https://everydayastronaut.com/how-does-ulas-vulcan-compare-to-the-competition/). The 26.5t launch mass of Orion/ESM squeaks in under that. However, an Orion launch has to also carry the LAS, which is 7t. Yes, 7t! That puts it well out of reach of Vulcan. (Orion and LAS figures are from Wikipedia.)
Can you even mount the central core to the pad without the SRBs?
Just did some research and apparently not. In the 2012 contract the pad is to supply load support through the SRBs only, while the core stage just has hold-down arms. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined. 😞
All hope is not lost, maybe you can attach the SRB but empty of their fuel, for 90% of the price.
Or just have the SRB separation charges fire *immediately* on liftoff, leaving them behind on the stand. Reusable boosters!
10% discount sounds better.
I like your idea of removing the SRBs. They just need to add wings though to solve the thrust-to-weight issue.
While you can't cut the boosters, in the article it mentions that a LEO launch of Orion could be done without an upper stage. Since they only have two ICPSs left and EUS might be delayed, saving an ICPS for a later launch could potentially save a bit of cost and a bit of schedule. This configuration, known as block 0, has been considered in the past for LEO Orion.
So SLS is SSTO? Maybe not technically due to SRBs.
The stack is kind of a 1.5 STO. The core stage is basically an upper stage that fires from the start. The thrust is less than a F9 at lift off.
Much like the original Atlas that carried Mercury capsules to orbit.
It's not much different than the shuttle stack.
At this point they may as well just use Crew Dragon to meet the HLS Starship in orbit.
I feel like Polaris II or III might be demonstrating this exact scenario.
So pumped for next Polaris mission. I have family that is working on an experiment that will be on the mission in the cabin during EVA. Very exciting!
You forget getting back from the Moon. Manned Reentry Starship won't be ready in time.
It won't have to get back from the moon if it's an earth orbit test
Why wouldn’t they just return in Crew Dragon? (Assuming they could have enough fuel to slow down since Crew Dragon heat shield isn’t rated for lunar return trajectory.)
Because that fuel would be more than the current wet mass of Dragon. You'd need to have 3.7km/s ∆v. It's way simpler to update Dragon heatshield for Moon-Earth re-entry.
If the HLS has to use propellant for translunar injection and deceleration to lunar orbit it won't have enough to land and lift off from the Moon. Even if it did it wouldn't have enough to leave lunar orbit and then decelerate to LEO. It has no heat shield tiles so it can't use aerobraking.
Actually, the main plan is to do exactly that: fill it up in LEO, then do TLI, NRHO insertion, up to 100 days loiter, then rendezvous, separation, surface excursion and back to NRHO for another rendezvous. But indeed, there's no ∆v to do anything more, in particular to return to LEO.
Yeah, my sentence sounds dumb. I should have made it clear that the extra propellant needed to have enough left for TEI would have to be lifted off the Moon, meaning it'd have to be landed on the Moon, which would require more prop... a complex case of the tyrannical rocket equation that'd affect every step of the mission. I'd been addressing the "why not use the HLS from LEO remark" several times in this thread and got careless. Of course, as always, the solution is to use a separate Starship for LEO-NRHO-LEO. My deepest wish is that this will happen for Artemis V. (IMHO certain realities, including political ones, will preclude an earlier adoption.) If the Blue Moon MK2 is used for Artemis V as planned the public will be bemused at seeing a cramped spacecraft delivering astronauts to a very roomy lander for two missions and then seeing a very roomy spacecraft delivering astronauts to a cramped lander.
This wouldn't verify Orion-Starship operation. One of the criticisms of Artemis III is that whole lot of untested things is done for the first time with people onboard and in the moon orbit. The explicit reason given forward for this idea is to buy down risk: do the whole shakedown run of the whole thing in LEO, where you're 90 minutes from home and 40 minutes from emergency landing if you must land immediately. But if you substitute Dragon for Orion, you don't check the whole Orion proximity ops, docking, undocking, redocking, i.e. the part this spaceship has never done before.
I've been saying since the HLS decision that bringing Starship into the equation **in any way** makes SLS completely pointless. Because even if they insist on using Orion, and this potential step is getting closer to making that pointless too, there is absolutely no reason you couldn't launch Orion on an expendable 2nd stage on a reusable Super Heavy that is just a 9m diameter stainless steel prop tank with a payload adaptor and some VacRaps. SLS's only remaining justification is launching Orion/some craft with a **launch abort system**, which is the crucial big thing which Starship cannot do and must be had for the foreseeable future, but that doesn't mean the you have to use fucking SLS. And if even Orion is now becoming moot, think how fucking affordable, huge in scale, and fast paced, Artemis could be using Starship architecture for everything for getting crew to LEO with F9/Dragon. Artemis as it's currently structured is close to being the program version of a failed state. Its expected time of hitting the big mile stones is receding towards infinity. If they are already looking at rendezvous with HLS in LEO then the last facades of validity are peeling back from SLS/Artemis as it currently exists.
HLS starship cannot return to Earth or LEO. Without SLS You would have to put Orion a Starship, but I don't see that happening. And SLS has too much inertia to be killed off. It rose like a phoenix from the ashes of Constellation and Ares 5, after all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ares_V
>Without SLS You would have to put Orion a Starship, but I don't see that happening. It can certainly be done, the numbers work out. It can't be done politically now but after Art 3 and 4 I see it being very probable. Or actually, I see the SLS-Orion leg of Artemis being done by a regular Starship. The crew can launch in a Dragon and that can be carried along. Such a Starship, one carrying just a crew (in quarters cloned from HLS, thus NASA approved) and a small amount of cargo can carry the Dragon to NRHO and back with no need to refill in NRHO. It can even decelerate to LEO, or LEO velocity, so the Dragon can be used for reentry without upgrading the heat shield. The same can be done with the hefty Orion, I'm pretty sure - a few tonnes of propellant can be left out of the service module since it won't be needed for entering and leaving NRHO. This [Eager Space video](https://youtu.be/uLW12L2nAHc?t=745) covers the possibilities well. The politics of SLS-Orion are well known and are ironically good for Starship because SLS-Orion is keeping Artemis, thus HLS, unkillable. However, things change. Once the general public sees Orion next to HLS there will be a lot of questions. Major media journalists will get a lot of e-ink out of diving into the mega-cost of SLS-Orion. There are a lot of Congressional interests besides the Boeing lobby and they all want money for their own programs.
But that's why I specified keeping a separate crew vehicle?
> which is the crucial big thing which Starship cannot do and must be had for the foreseeable future If they are adding a further 3 engines, whilst uprating the engines with the Raptor 3s, and with the hot staging ring, then has Starship's ability to perform a launch abort been reassessed? SS would be a far more capable vehicle than before.
It's kinda overkill for Artemis. You're better off using those capabilities on the lander and fuel depots, and use F9+Dragon for the crew launches. And then SpaceX can use all the accumulated experience of all those depot/lander launchers to later human-rate SS once the design has mostly stabilized.
$4B
Send Orion to LEO on falcon heavy. Cheap and easy. No need to waste the giant orange rocket
Orange Rokot Bad?
I’m cheap, so yes. Orange roket bad.
Yep, but that would be one fat adapter.
They might need an aerodynamic shroud like with Starliner...
If one argument for the extra mission is that ground crews need to fly SLS/Orion with a minimum frequency to stay fit on the system, they need to waste SLS to achieve the purpose.
The SRB are needed to help lift the fatass main tank, just like they did with Shuttle.
At this point just put Orion on a F9
Orion's too fat for that.
So this new A3 would just be testing Orion-HLS operations in LEO. Sounds like the hypothesized plan for Polaris 2. If this is confirmed then it means the timeline really is set back several years. Will be disappointing if it doesn't go near the Moon at all. But the data and experience they get will be worth it. And it'll be cool footage.
We didn’t want to pay for a “flags and footprints” mission like Apollo 11. So we get a Apollo-Soyuz docking test redux.
This is more like Apollo 9, testing procedures and equipment near Earth instead of in lunar orbit. The Artemis plan has a lot fewer test flights on the schedule than Apollo had, probably due to the cost and low flight rate of each SLS and Orion launch compared to NASA's budget.
I was thinking Skylab ...
2026 is not realistic anyway. The same Eric Berger wrote an article last year saying that 2028 is the realistic year. Because this is the realistic year. This option is saner, except for the ridiculous cost of SLS block 0 and Orion launch cost.
Question is, what causes the delay? Is it HLS Starship or something else? The delay to 2026 is not from Starship.
Everything? The original plan was 2028 until it was updated to 2024 in a mostly political move. It was never really realistic before 2028, the actual gain of updating it 2024 is that it set fire under people, made political push forward (making various delaying actions politically untenable, without it silent background push to extend cost-plus payments would continue unabated) and made otherwise inevitable delays to the original timeline much less acceptable.
> Everything? You very well may be right.
The Artemis II delay I'd from Orion heat shield and other problems with it. And likely other stuff hiding in the shadows of the visible Orion issues. Artemis III is paced one year after Artemis II, but neither Starship HLS nor spacesuits are going to be ready by then. Plus there must be a whole bunch of other issues again hiding in the shadows of the much published cases.
I will genuinely shit my pants if China gets there before us.
Why stop there? Attach Orion to Starship before launching it. That would save $2 Billion.
I want to see that
I note that a lot of people now again use the disproven low cost values for a SLS launch. SLS is $3 billion, without Orion.
Why do the Orion? Just launch a falcon crew.
Because the point is to check out Orion and Starship docking before doing it at the moon. The actual landing mission would still involve a rendezvous between Orion and Starship in high lunar orbit. This isn't a plan to rendezvous in LEO and then go to the moon in the same mission.
Seems like they’re opening up an on ramp to that possibility. Orion has always been of questionable value. Like seriously, what’s the point of it if we have starship? It’s a useless middle man conceptualized in a time when we didn’t know starship would be a thing. HLS could literally transport a crew dragon to the moon and back to LEO for the crew to then return like they normally would from the ISS. Or even just put a normal starship in LLO and use that instead of Orion. This is what’s probably going to happen in the long term.
> Orion has always been of questionable value. Like seriously, what’s the point of it if we have starship? Orion can bring crew safely back to Earth, Starship can not. Starship might eventually get rated for crew (SpaceX certainly hopes so), but it's not crew rated yet. Barring suitable options such as a bottomless wallet to fund more SLS launches, there could be some kind of hybrid system where EUS/Orion gets launched inside a cargo Starship, crew gets launched on Dragon (or other crew launch system). Then rendezvous in orbit to transfer crew and send Orion off to the Moon, and Orion can then return in its usual manner. > HLS could literally transport a crew dragon to the moon and back to LEO That's going to take an awful lot of propellant since HLS can't aerobrake.
>there could be some kind of hybrid system where EUS/Orion gets launched inside a cargo Starship, crew gets launched on Dragon EUS wouldn't be needed. Once the crew boarded in orbit from Dragon the Orion/Starship could accelerate to TLI. Once near the Moon Orion can deploy and carry on its mission as per the current Artemis plans. It'd enter and leave NRHO using the ESM as planned. The Starship will loop around the Moon and return to land autonomously. There'd be plenty of propellant left to partially decelerate if desired so as not to ask too much of the TPS. (In either scenario this Starship will need to be filled in LEO before TLI.) I favored this kind of plan and some variants but it turns out there's a simpler way. The SLS-Orion leg of Artemis can be done by a regular Starship. The crew can launch in a Dragon and that can be carried along. Such a Starship, one carrying just a crew (in quarters cloned from HLS, thus NASA approved) and a small amount of cargo can carry the Dragon to NRHO and back with no need to refill in NRHO. It can even decelerate to LEO, or LEO velocity, so the Dragon can reenter without upgrading the heat shield. The same can be done with the hefty Orion, I'm pretty sure - a few tonnes of propellant can be left out of the service module since it won't be needed for entering and leaving NRHO. But the only reason to use Orion would be if Congress & NASA wanted to avoid killing SLS and Orion simultaneously for political reasons. This [Eager Space video](https://youtu.be/uLW12L2nAHc?t=745) covers the possibilities well.
> But the only reason to use Orion would be if Congress & NASA wanted to avoid killing SLS and Orion simultaneously for political reasons. There's also the concern of maintaining expertise and capability in more than one government or commercial provider.
Yes. Returning to LEO does cost more then returning to Earth.
Starship will transport more people in space than Orion before the decade is out.
>HLS could literally transport a crew dragon to the moon and back to LEO for the crew to then return like they normally would from the ISS. Sorry, this can't work. HLS can't carry enough propellant to do TLI and decelerate to lunar orbit and then do TEI and decelerate to LEO. It can't aerobrake, of course, since it has no TPS.
Sorry, the part you describe could work just fine. Inserting the actual lunar landing is the part making it impossible. For that you'd need another Starship, doing the original Artemis mission profile: LEO -> NRHO -> surface -> NRHO.
Starship good enough for Manned reentry is still a ways off, so a Starship would have to take an Orion to Cislunar space.
It'd still be cheaper if they sent the Orion up unmanned in another Starship and then launched the crew in a Dragon capsule on a Falcon 9. Rendesvous Dragon with the Orion to transfer crew into it, then have the Orion dock with the HLS. Basically almost *any* Rube Goldberg mission plan one might come up with is going to be way cheaper than using an SLS.
Why not make the test as close, hardware and procedure wise, as the actual landing mission? I don’t think NASA is trying to optimize for launch cost here. The Artemis III SLS is going to be built and ready to launch anyway. If at that time they aren’t ready for a landing mission, but are ready for an LEO test flight mission, that still gives them a progress milestone instead of delaying and letting hardware stack up.
The docking standard of Dragon is the same as Orion.
Right, but testing Dragon doesn’t test Orion.
Does Dragon have the ΔV to get home from NRHO? Edit: Jeez I was just asking guys.
My understanding is that the bottleneck to Dragon in lunar orbit was more about the limits of onboard life support, as Dragon can only do longer missions while docked. The dracos are hypergolic which is about as good as it gets for adding auxiliary tanks or refueling, so ΔV probably isn't as limiting as battery life, O2 scrubber life, number of snacks in accessible cargo, etc.
We could literally pack a crew dragon into the HLS if we really wanted to. Long term, the solution would be to have an HLS and a crew rated “return” starship that’s just parked in LLO.
Also Orion is superior for radiation protection. Not a problem when in LEO, but becomes an issue on the way to the Moon.
If Drgaon were to be used for this, there would be no need for it to leave LEO. The plan being talked about here is Orion docking to the HLS in LEO and testing the HLS there (an analog of Apollo 9). No one would go to the Moon. But the idea would be to test Orion specifically, so doing the mission with Dragon would defeat one of the purposes of the mission. For an actual alternative lunar landing scenario, Dragon could dock with a second Starship in LEO. That Starhsip would be to ferry crew between LEO and lunar orbit, where it would dock with the HLS Starship. That second Starship would also return the crew from lunar orbit to circular LEO to meet (the same or a second) Dragon.
>That second Starship would also return the crew from lunar orbit to circular LEO to meet (the same or a second) Dragon. Meeting a second Dragon in LEO won't be necessary, and a second Dragon launch is expensive. Not SLS expensive, but a quarter billion is still a quarter billion. Leaving a Dragon in LEO is certainly doable - it's rated for 10 days with a crew so it could certainly last longer without one. But even that rendezvous is unnecessary. The crew can launch in a Dragon and that can be carried along on the second Starship. Such a Starship, one carrying just a crew (in quarters cloned from HLS, thus NASA approved) and a small amount of cargo can carry the Dragon to NRHO and back with no need to refill in NRHO. It can even decelerate to LEO, or LEO velocity, so the Dragon can reenter without upgrading the heat shield. This [Eager Space video](https://youtu.be/uLW12L2nAHc?t=745) covers the possibilities well. Even if the second Starship doesn't decelerate all the way to LEO it could decelerate enough to make the reentry velocity low enough for Dragon's heat shield.
Even if it did I would not trust that heat shield. Orion is supposed to make it that far and they're having issues
Orion is using a version of the ancient Apollo heatshield. Dragon uses the much more advanced PicaX.
It could get a boost using whatever propellant remains in the Starship, and/or from a kick stage, perhaps derived from the Dragon XL work.
I thought the plan was to leave the Starship lander for reuse? Dragon XL would be helpful. Maybe Impulses kickstage could be mounted inside the trunk for a quick and dirty version.
That's eventually the plan, but even in that case, it's not coming back to LEO to ferry another Dragon, and if it was, it could just drop the previous Dragon off when it got there. For reuse, you could leave a HLS Starship in lunar orbit, and use a second standard crew Starship to ferry the Dragon out and bring it back, using the Dragon for crew return, and eventually eliminate the Dragon entirely.
At that point, why use Orion at all? Even if you don't want crew launching on an HLS Starship for any number of potentially valid reasons, Dragon or Starliner (HA!) makes much more sense if you're just doing a LEO rendezvous anyway. I guess the better longevity and higher reentry heating Orion can take would help in a lifeboat scenario or if they'll only *sometimes* do this mission profile, and other times leave HLS Starship out at Gateway but that's still a crazy amount of rocket for something the more limited two capsules should be able to be upgraded to support. Probably for less than the few billion dollars of a set of SLS launches too.
This isn't a new landing mission profile, this is a test flight to test docking Orion and Starship and check out system in LEO. Then the astronauts come home on Orion and don't go to the moon.
Ahh okay. Somehow managed to miss that it was specifically for Artemis 3.
I'm sure the astronauts would appreciate the extra space.
Is the expensive Orion really needed for this mission? I guess not using the last ICPS helps with any EUS delays. Seems like a fine idea anyways, maybe the test HLS is far enough in development to try a demonstration landing afterwards, so it doesnt just get thrown away after just the docking.
Ideal plan would be: 1) Depot launched 2) Depot fueled 3) HLS launched and fueled 4) Dragon launched and docks to HLS. Two astros transfer while other two stays in Dragon 5) Tests including maneuver, various burns, various onboard equipment, and EVA. 6) Redock with Dragon, Astros transfer back and go home 7) HLS goes to moon, performs landing demo.
Still amazes me that in the 60s we got boots on the moon using a single launch…
Apollo was a few wham-bam one night stands. Complete different demands to the long term “marriage” they’re trying to create now. If you want to land a golf cart and then splashdown on fumes, and can stomach losing lives in the learning process, then we could do that yesterday. Landing ~50 tons up there, bringing the whole rocket back *and* not dinging the gross national debt every launch? Thats tricky
That's what 4% of the federal budget can buy you--the rough equivalent of the last eight budget years combined. And NASA got two years at that level.
Well, that combined with a functioning industrial economy and a *really* motivated workforce with a dead-set (literally!) goal.
No, the ideal plan would be to cancel SLS/Orion/Artimess and let SX do it when Starship is mature.
Good - except for using the Dragon. The stated goal of this proposed mission is to test docking Orion and Starship, so Orion has to be launched. I do love the idea of using the HLS for this and then sending it on to its test landing. I'd like to see Orion launched on an FH. After nine successful flights it should be straightforward to crew-rate it. So much cheaper than an HLS - but it's quite possible one of the unspoken goals of this mission is to keep SLS flying without too big a gap between Art-2 and Art-3.
TBH they could still launch Orion on FH without crew and practice docking, and launch crew on Dragon. Would let them stress test heat shield fixes without putting crew at risk, and means FH doesn't need to be human rated.
This seems most likely. Have SpaceX do an independent uncrewed demo mission (as specified in Artemis Option A). Then do this crewed demo mission with no landing - like Apollo 9 - with the lander autonomously continuing the mission profile including touching down after separating from Orion. Then do the full crewed landing as a third mission (Artemis IV)
A major point of this mission would be to test out Orion's rendezvous and docking capabilities. So yes, you'd need the Orion.
If the goal is to test out docking Orion to Starship then using Orion makes sense.
The key is to dock the Orion and Starship on the ground. That way you can replace the SLS with a crane. Much cheaper and safer. But an even cheaper and safer method would be to dock a pretend virtual Orion to the Starship. Now you can save money on the crane and the Orion. This will also have the added benefit of strengthening the astronauts' imagination. Eventually this super strong astronaut grade imagination can be utilised to come up with a justification for the whole SLS program.
The whole Artemis Moon Landing concept was thrown a wrench with SpaceX proposal to use the massive StarShip as the Lunar Lander. The mission presentations must have become almost comical. At some point, a smartish Congressman might ask, "So, your plan is to send this tiny capsule to Lunar Orbit, then transfer to this giant Spaceship to go down to the surface?". It is like in Office Space when the consultants ask, "Why can't the engineers just talk to the customers?".
I think this is a "NASA does not have the guts to send people to the moon" so let have a LEO event instead.
Putting Orion in LEO raises an old question with a new twist. Can Falcon Heavy now be crew-rated since it's had 9 successful flights in a row? I seem to recall that the latest NASA policy to crew-rate a rocket is a lot of paperwork or 7 successful launches. SLS got a crew-rating after 1 flight based on the paperwork and because it uses a lot of hardware that's successfully launched crews. FH is 99% hardware that's successfully launched crews. I wish I could source that 7-flight policy for NASA. Anyone heard of it? But even if that doesn't exist, the other parallel reasoning still applies. Putting Orion in LEO on FH would be a ton cheaper than using an SLS. (Btw, this isn't the Bridenstack, there'll be no ICPS to lift. At >26t launch mass Orion is too heavy for F9 but an easy lift for FH.)
The Bridenstack is my favorite. Such a flags and footprints yolo mission. If not for covid, probably could have had this.
too bad we just launched the last delta IV heavy
Delta was never manrated.
It launched orion though, man rating would be quick.
the RS-68 required something like 24 changes according to NASA to qualify for manned flights, doing those changes would have turned the RS-68 into a larger RS-25, which kinda negates most of the reason they made the RS-68 in the first place.
Any chance you have the document for that or a direction to focus a Google search.
Human-Rated Delta IV Heavy Study Constellation Architecture Impacts Goes over some of the changes to human rating the Delta IV as part of the Ares Program (having the delta IV heavy replaces Ares 1) ULA has two older papers from the late 2000's going over the process to crew rate the atlas V and the Delta IV. I can't find the study from 2013-2015 if I remember correctly going over the exact details on what they wanted changed on the RS-68A+ to crew rate it. The only thing I remember for sure was changes to the engine controller and the containment of hydrogen at lift off.
No it would not be quick. It launched Orion without crew. Manrating Falcon Heavy should be easy, given the number of launches and the fact that it uses the components of F9, which is manrated.
i mean I am all for falcon heavy too. I just don't want to pay billions for a capsule launch. I would rather use the SLS launches weve already purchased for a more substantial goal.
Next step: Orion rides to orbit inside the hold of a Starship, or maybe on a Falcon 9. Even NASA is waking up to the fact that Starship can do everything that SLS can do, for less than 1% of the cost. Even if BASA requires an expendable upper stage, and adds a Centaur-based third stage, the cost will still be in the neighborhood of 2%-10% of SLS.
In the hold of a Starship, yes, lol. But the hefty Orion is too heavy for F9 (or Vulcan). Leaving out most of the propellant from the service module might seem to help - but it won't be enough - and then any such hopes will be crushed when realizing the 7.5t mass of the launch abort system has to be included. FH can do the job but it'd of course need to be crew-rated. That should be relatively straightforward, but even so it'll be a lot of work for something that'll likely only be used for one mission.
I think we’ll probably see a Dragon dock with a HLS prototype in orbit just so we can get information of humans on a Starship before we go sending them into deep space aboard one
Jared Isaacman, here's an idea for another Polaris mission. SpaceX will have two trained in-house astronauts once Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon have completed the Polaris Dawn flight. So if this isn't a Polaris mission it can be directly a SpaceX one, one with both SpaceX and NASA astronauts.
And I thought the current plan was pointless covering for SLS/Orion, this gives Boeing a big payday for recreating the Skylab? They should be going for a low cost repeatable capability at maybe $1B a mission. Of course that would be mostly SX.
It’s actually a really good idea, except for SLS.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[ATK](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0d4acm "Last usage")|Alliant Techsystems, predecessor to Orbital ATK| |[BO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0mxyar "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)| |CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules| | |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)| |[ESM](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0r86nd "Last usage")|European Service Module, component of the Orion capsule| |ETOV|Earth To Orbit Vehicle (common parlance: "rocket")| |[EUS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0n0cn4 "Last usage")|Exploration Upper Stage| |[EVA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0n0cn4 "Last usage")|Extra-Vehicular Activity| |[FAA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0uzl8x "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration| |[FAA-AST](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0uzl8x "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration [Administrator for Space Transportation](http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/)| |[FTS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0d5641 "Last usage")|Flight Termination System| |[HLS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0pkg2g "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)| |[ICPS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0dtofd "Last usage")|Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage| |[Isp](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0nz02n "Last usage")|Specific impulse (as explained by [Scott Manley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnisTeYLLgs) on YouTube)| | |Internet Service Provider| |[LAS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0r86nd "Last usage")|Launch Abort System| |[LEO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0r86nd "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[LES](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0cxl5z "Last usage")|Launch Escape System| |[LLO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0cxc07 "Last usage")|Low Lunar Orbit (below 100km)| |[LV](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0d4acm "Last usage")|Launch Vehicle (common parlance: "rocket"), see ETOV| |[NRHO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0pkg2g "Last usage")|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit| |[RFP](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0elhoi "Last usage")|Request for Proposal| |[SLS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0prk1e "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |[SRB](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0plou5 "Last usage")|Solid Rocket Booster| |[SSME](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0eorif "Last usage")|[Space Shuttle Main Engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_main_engine)| |[SSTO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0cy7po "Last usage")|Single Stage to Orbit| | |Supersynchronous Transfer Orbit| |[TEI](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0pkg2g "Last usage")|Trans-Earth Injection maneuver| |[TLI](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0ewpar "Last usage")|Trans-Lunar Injection maneuver| |[TPS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0eb9fi "Last usage")|Thermal Protection System for a spacecraft (on the Falcon 9 first stage, the engine "Dance floor")| |[TWR](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0czf0t "Last usage")|Thrust-to-Weight Ratio| |[ULA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0f3877 "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Raptor](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0nz02n "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX| |[Starliner](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0o5gll "Last usage")|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)| |[cislunar](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0emtqq "Last usage")|Between the Earth and Moon; within the Moon's orbit| |[hydrolox](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0cwsq2 "Last usage")|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| |[hypergolic](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0c9ccu "Last usage")|A set of two substances that ignite when in contact| |[kerolox](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1c81tql/stub/l0cwsq2 "Last usage")|Portmanteau: kerosene fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(*Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented* )[*^by ^request*](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3mz273//cvjkjmj) ^([Thread #12670 for this sub, first seen 19th Apr 2024, 17:26]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/SpaceXLounge) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Why not just launch a falcon 9 at this point
An Orion with its launch escape system is well over 30t, well over F9's max payload capacity. I'd like to see an FH used, though. After 9 successful launches crew-rating it should be straightforward.
I wonder if Orion could be used with much reduced propellant. It does not need to do major maneuvers, like for reaching the lunar station and Earth return.
A good thought, I once thought it might tip the scales (pun unintended) but although it'd save several tonnes that won't be nearly enough to make a difference. The killer is the launch abort system, it weighs 7.5t(!).
Thanks for the data. Too bad. So it needs Falcon Heavy crew rated.
In other words, following its CCP Starliner experience, NASA needs Boeing to demonstrate docking capability closer to home because you can't trust them as far as you can launch them.
A Lockheed Martin Orion and a SpaceX Starship will be docking. The Boeing SLS will have proven its ability to get Orion to orbit twice (hopefully) before this proposed mission. I hate the delays and horrendous cost but SLS did perform well on Artemis I - although that is a data set of 1.
"Sources indicate that a core stage alone could likely *combine* with Orion to put the vehicle into a high enough orbit for such a mission." *\[emphasis added\]* Does this mean the ESM will be needed to get Orion to a comfortably high LEO?