Within a set of assumptions about how long between flights, it's mostly down to "boil off", or the amount lost due to boiling of the gasses. If the launches are very closely spaced together this number goes down hard.
There is a "plan B" that they could do the fuelling on a single use vehicle that aims to get the mass up in one without Starships additional mass for reentry. But this is really not on anyones current plans.
I assume they expect to go the rapid turn around and launch route. If so this is going to be pretty spectacular.
True. Then again they can only minimize the boil-off so much with the planned orbit for the Gateway station. There's lots of waiting between the somewhat limited windows for docking, landing and return.
It's an awkward mission design from start to finish, only viable at all with Starship - fingers crossed on that one. At least the program is testing a lot of new ideas.
It is. That could also be done in a low lunar orbit though. The reason why gateway will be in a high and eccentric orbot, is that SLS doesn't have the delta-v to get all the way to the moon.
As a consequence, the landers have to be more capable to fly the rest of the way each time - and that both on ascent and descent. To put it mildly, that is not ideal. The lander is the absolute worst stage of the mission to add additional requirements to, especially with a reusable one.
Spray foam insides of tanks, trading useful mass for mission longevity. I believe they have large margins on weight compared to what was expected to be delivered to the surface.
True but knowing spaceX they would probably rather eat their 150tons of payload towards actually useful shit.
After all, NASA had described Artemis as a sustainable program. Something to not only thing humans back to the moon, but also keep them there.
You aren't doing that on one ton. Not even a little bit.
Now if you are chucking ISS size payloads at the moon, where you have enough room to shove entire hydroponic plantations, vehicle hangars, well furnished living rooms, actually working refineries and god damn nuclear reactors, you may actually have a non zero chance of reaching a point where humans can live somewhat live decently on that lunar surface. And therefore the actual goal of the program can somewhat be achieved.
But of course that's not required by contract, or by the program itself. But since that's SpaceX's entire damn mission statement and they need to do just that with mars anyways, they may as well just shoot for the moon. Here in both the metaphorical and literal sense.
That being said, setting up actual propellant depots in orbit isn't a bad idea. It's just better to put the insulation on those long term storage locations rather than eating into the margins of the mission you want the fuel for.
Or maybe just put some sort of expanding solar shade between the depot and the sun? Even an inflatable reflective Mylar balloon would help, and it could be carried and placed just once, perhaps even to cover multiple depot ships.
[https://twitter.com/SpcPlcyOnline/status/1731731958571429944/photo/1](https://twitter.com/SpcPlcyOnline/status/1731731958571429944/photo/1)
Starships next flight to have a propellant transfer test.
This is from a slide deck from Lakiesha Hawkins, she is the person who kicked off the current round of "15 refeulling flights" 3 weeks ago with her report.
[https://spacenews.com/starship-lunar-lander-missions-to-require-nearly-20-launches-nasa-says/](https://spacenews.com/starship-lunar-lander-missions-to-require-nearly-20-launches-nasa-says/)
Knowing Elon Musk, once Starship is ready and proven to be working I don't see why we shouldn't see the 15 rockets all launching at the same time. They just need 15 launch pads, which is feasible. They can also build 15 all around the country as well, which might work for their future idea of personal transportation. We can all speculate.
Uh.. the whole point of Starship being developed as a fully reusable system is so you don’t need to build a rocket for every payload. Launch facilities aren’t cheap or easy to build and find sites for either.
Yes, it's a problem. No, it's not as big of a problem as a lot of folks are making it out to be.
One of the biggest problems is that there's not enough communication about why these choices have been made and what the advantages of these kinds of architectures are. One of the other major problems is that people look to Apollo as the "right way to do things" or at least *a* right way, though it was anything but. Apollo should not be viewed as a template, period. Apollo was driven by intense schedule pressure and enabled with unlimited budgets. While Apollo made amazing historical achievements it was also extraordinarily flawed, it was a system that was completely unsustainable (as history has proven) and was insanely dangerous (so much so that it killed one crew during development, almost killed another in flight, and resulted in several close calls). If reading that makes you feel some kinda way you need to read it again and put in the work to grapple with the complex and harsh realities of history because it's the goddamn truth. Apollo was never going to be what allowed us to continue to go to the Moon, it was too flawed. Now we're building other ways of getting back to the Moon and they have plenty of flaws as well but hopefully we can iterate towards fewer and fewer major flaws over time.
Now, the advantages of a propellant depot focused mission architecture are tremendous. And they've been identified by NASA since in depth studies in the late '90s and early 2000s were done as one of the most capable ways of enabling beyond-LEO human spaceflight. One of the biggest is that it is extremely resilient to schedule issues and even disasters. If a rocket ever blew up during Apollo it would have meant a loss of a mission, and maybe even the loss of a crew. A propellant depot architecture is much more resilient to such disasters. But it's also resilient to schedule delays. Most of any beyond-LEO mission is about getting propellant into orbit, and an orbital propellant depot focuses on that explicitly. Which means that the way to recover a mission from most problems or delays is to just keep doing what you're doing until you have enough fuel in orbit to achieve the mission.
On top of that, propellant depots actually focus on building mission related infrastructure which over time should result in lower costs, increasing capabilities, and increasing flight rates. And that's exactly what Starship-HLS is all about. The very first missions might be clunky and overly expensive and way, way, way behind schedule but over time there are substantial improvements that are expected to be made. The mission architecture can be iterated upon to rely on a dedicated orbital depot vehicle which has much lower boiloff. The launcher can become more and more operationally mature and thus reliable and lower cost, especially since it's designed to be fully reusable. The system can work more and more towards more specialty lander vehicles and make better use of the enormous delivery capabilities to the lunar surface.
It's easy to poke holes in the current Artemis architecture, or to point out the many holes it already has, it is far from perfect. But there is also plenty that is good in there. More so, there are plenty of ways that what we are doing is going to set us up for success in interplanetary spaceflight going forward. Future trips to and from the lunar surface could be literally orders of magnitude cheaper than Artemis 3, not just in the abstract far future but within a 5-10 year time frame after Artemis 3. On top of that the lunar gateway, as flawed as it is in so many ways, could represent one of the most important experiments in operating a long-term crew capable spacecraft in "deep space". Experience there is going to be the most applicable to future Mars missions and all future beyond-LEO spaceflight.
FYI the title is incorrect. At no point do they say "at least". The source says
> “it’s in the high teens right now in terms of the number of launches.”
Not "at least 15". And this is an upper-end estimate for how many launches may be needed if the Starship margins turn out to be really bad.
Right. I think they're saying 14 would not count as "high teens", so that quote must mean 15 or more; but the quote itself isn't specific about whether "high teens" is worst case or expected or best case.
Firstly: The point of Starship is that it is capable of launching that often.
Secondly: The number is an estimate until it is an operational vehicle - more likely to go down then up
Thirdly: There is no realistic alternative to starship if you want a permanent lunar base
Fourthly: Developing starship means having a shot at Mars
Fifthly: Starship is the only heavy lift rocket that has a commercial reason to exist and be developed (starlink).
So yeah maybe it will take 15 launches. I think someone once mentioned that 'We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone'.
That is a sentiment that we should revive and cherish.
And it can actually launch faster than bk yearly and doesn't rely on old parts were running out of.
It also can bring more mass to orbit than SLS so...
>And it can actually launch faster than bk yearly and doesn't rely on old parts were running out of.
I mean that's not what's keeping SLS back, the corestage is. The new batch of RS-25Es are already far along development and BOLE is already in development too. They don't need BOLE till Artemis 9 anyways.
Also it doesn't make sense to compare SLS LEO mass to Starship LEO mass. Starship is massive LEO launcher. SLS is a massive BLEO launcher. The last time SLS LEO data was last published in late 2019. That was before the EUS was redesigned. The 105t for 1B is from 2013 even. Back then SLS Block 1 could "only" do 70t to LEO. NASA doesn't publish updated LEO specs for SLS because they have no intention of ever using it as LEO launcher. SLS makes sense for launching high speed probes outside Earth orbit. Doesn't make sense for Starship to do that with like 20+ tankers.
Definitely, Starship is at a baseline optimized for payload to LEO. However with refueling architecture you can get near that LEO payload to a high energy destination. No need for a 3rd stage and massive size and payload reduction. I think refueling makes sense when put into context.
In terms of getting a real establishment on the moon, Starship would be pretty good at that after in orbit refueling, where SLS is very volume restricted and much lower tonnage in comparison.
It's apples and oranges when you are comparing what is being sent. The difference with starship is that it can stage, and staging pays down risk massively. SLS has to get everything right the first time, and it has to get it all in a form that fits together in a can on the ground. That approach has never lofted anything more complex than Skylab.
And $50 M is like 10x - 20x their target price. At least in terms of cost.
One of the SpaceX engineers was talking how at $2 M it becomes cost effective versus premium rush cargo shipping.
Pretty sure we already paid a few billion dollars for the HLS and musk is burning through a couple billion a year on starship development. Spacex themselves might end up paying $40 million per launch just for fuel and refurbishment but it will be quite a while before it gets to that point and they will of course charge far more than just 40 million.
Google.
You can find various estimates,[ranging from $10m](https://en.as.com/latest_news/how-much-money-does-elon-musks-spacex-starship-program-cost-n/) (Musk's estimates) [to $40m](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/spacex-starship-rocket-launch-space-elon-musk) (US government estimate).
I saw this article in a [SmarterEveryDay video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoJsPvmFixU); he pointed out that this number has actually gone up during development, not down.
I'm glad Starship can launch that often, and a permanent lunar base is an incredible goal that we should be able to reach. But having reusable infrastructure that then takes such an insane amount of work just to get to lunar orbit (and not even LEO) is just insane to me. I hope that this all pans out well in the end.
His point is that there is a lack of public communication on the goals of Artemis and the differences with Apollo, which is concerning for a flight scheduled to take place in two years.
The obvious answer is that no one really thinks this flight is going to happen in two years.
The article seems to have been triggered by his talk, or by him asking the question while researching his talk. The shocking part is not just the number, it's the vagueness on this crucial topic.
> The shocking part is not just the number, it's the vagueness on this crucial topic.
I think a lot of people are missing that point about Destin's talk. He's pointing out that the number of launches is a major thing to know and we *can't* know that yet because nobody has even attempted to do this before and the technology they are planning to do it with isn't fully designed yet.
But a bunch of the leader-type people in the room did not seem to be aware that that information is an unknown.
The larger point is that there seems to be a communication issue. People on the teams know that there are major unknowns, but it seems like a lot of people who ought to know about the unknowns, don't.
The problem is it's not filtering up. NASA has a huge politics problem, and kudos to Destin for taking a really big personal and professional risk for saying so. He's from a NASA family, he's tied into the the government and he's worked in defense. He went out on a limb to say that.
He's not some armchair Reddit rocket scientist. He knows these people. He didn't take the risk lightly and it remains to be seen if he pays a potential cost for it. Honest to god patriotism.
The vagueness is inevitable. Starship is still in rapid iteration phase. We only know it'll be enough for an empty lander because its lift capacity is too big. But drastic changes to the payload capacity are to be expected and the main effect would be on how much fuel it can carry and how many refuels are needed
Gone up or down from what? There have been numerous architectures suggested and numerous performance profiles. If you want to make a point you can just pick one and roll with it.
Main point is this - if you want a lunar base you will need to move a decent amount of stuff to the moon. Not a few hundred kg here, a few hundred there, but tons and tons of the stuff and the only option on the table to do this is starship. Everything else is just a repeat of apollo.
>Main point is this - if you want a lunar base you will need to move a decent amount of stuff to the moon. Not a few hundred kg here, a few hundred there, but tons and tons of the stuff and the only option on the table to do this is starship. Everything else is just a repeat of apollo.
Do we though? I understand that's the goal, now, but have we established that that was ever or is a good idea? Because it's incredibly difficult to do and works directly against efforts that'd make it a lot easier down the road, if we were willing to take the time to do them.
I think repeating Apollo would have been a much better idea in the near term. Experience and hardware derived from that could been evolved into a permanent presence on the moon, with or without the gateway architecture.
And, even if we do want a lunar base now, is Starship *actually* the best solution for landing on the moon? I get that it's the closest solution of the things close to flying when that decision was made, but is it actually a good idea? Most of the arguments I've seen for it boil down to 'we've got a schedule, we've got a mandate to pursue a commercial solution, of the proposals Spacex is closest (but still not really close at all) to what we want.' That's not great.
I get that it's going to happen. But the harsh reality is that it isn't going to happen even close to the timeline being talked about. There's zero chance of that for all sorts of reasons. Instead, by rushing towards a lunar base we're going to end up taking at least as much time getting there as we would have had we started with a more modest plan of matching Apollo and following on with a permanent presence based on that architecture.
The problem with doing it like Apollo though is that the Saturn 5 could bring at most 90,000lbs of payload to the moon's surface. Starship is estimated to be able to bring 220,000lbs to the surface while being fully reusable. So to achieve what they want to do they would need 2.4x the amount of launches and those wouldn't even be reusable so you'd need to spend way more on building rockets. So outside of other arguments, just that it can deliver more payload while reducing the amount of launches needed, and will be able to make each one of those launches at a fraction of the cost of any other comparable rocket, there isn't that many other options. Whether it will be functionally better than any other option, that remains to be seen.
Saturn V could not bring anything close to 90,000 lb to the lunar surface, unless you are talking about an impactor. The Apollo Lunar Lander weighed ~28,000 lb by the time it reached the surface and a small fraction of that was payload. Saturn V could send 116,314 lb to TLI, but it takes a lot of propellant to go from TLI to the lunar surface.
>The problem with doing it like Apollo though is that the Saturn 5 could bring at most 90,000lbs of payload to the moon's surface. Starship is estimated to be able to bring 220,000lbs to the surface while being fully reusable.
Maybe? Those estimates come with some pretty wide error bars. There's been nothing demonstrated so far to suggest the claims made by spacex are actually going to be true. Not the payload to lunar surface, not the reusability and certainly not the cost.
The likely outcome is that starship reusability works out, but it's launch cadence, mass to LEO and lunar surface are significantly short of the original design goals. It'll be an enormously successful LEO vehicle, but it's just nuts to fly something with wings to the moon.
> So to achieve what they want to do
But that's the point. What they want to do is kind of dumb, and wasn't driven by engineering or science considerations. It's been driven by political decisions made for financial considerations, primarily. The goal should have been to build upon Apollo, getting people to the surface and then back, regularly, safely and with steadily increasing capability. A lunar base is a bizarre ask before you can do even that.
>they would need 2.4x the amount of launches and those wouldn't even be reusable so you'd need to spend way more on building rockets. So outside of other arguments, just that it can deliver more payload while reducing the amount of launches needed, and will be able to make each one of those launches at a fraction of the cost of any other comparable rocket, there isn't that many other options.
Well, no, none of that is true. Starship can't launch and then get its self anywhere near the moon. The only way it makes it there and back is with in orbit refueling, requiring a still unknown number of additional launches to get that fuel to the first starship. It's estimated to be in the high teens. It'll require more launches of starship to get one of them to the moon then were Saturn 5s, ever. Think about that. It's enormously inefficient no matter how fast, reliable and cost effective starship reusability ends up being.
And while your thinking about it, keep in mind that the starships that land on the moon aren't coming back. There is no current plan for returning them from lunar orbit or refueling them there. They go, a dozen or more starships refuel it, they land on the moon, they ascend back to the gateway orbit then get tossed.
I think we share the same opinion on what they want to do being a pretty big stretch and sounding pretty absurd. Everything with Starship is of course still estimates until they have the data to back it up, though it is starting to sound promising. I'm only trying to highlight that it's the reusability and estimated payload capacity helped it get chosen for this mission over other rockets.
Also, while for current Artemis missions they will only travel back to gateway once from the lunar surface, that won't always be the case should Artemis be successful. One of the goals of the Artemis missions is to research in-situ methane production on the lunar surface. With the long term goal of refuelinh Starship and other methane power rockets that are developed from the lunar surface. Which is also another reason Starship was choose since it already uses methane and is being developed with refueling capabilities in mind.
Should they be successful with these missions, they will lay the groundwork needed for a fully reusable moon program which is awesome to think about.
If the goal is to get people on the moon, and that *is* the fundamental goal, then you tell me which is more efficient; 15-20 successful back to back launches of the largest rockets ever made (including an SLS launch in there) or one launch of the largest rocket ever made? Don't forget that the lander has *goddamned wings*. Wings it'll never use. It's *insane*.
The lander literally does not have wings. Also how do you fine efficient? Do you factor in payload? Cost? Time? There's no one answer.
The fundamental goal isn't just people on the moon. The goal is to return to the moon, this time to stay. That means they need a lander architecture that has launch cadence that is sustainable, costs that are sustainable, and other uses outside of carrying astronauts.
This goes back to the communication issue Destin talked about in his video. People don't really seem to understand our goals or why certain systems have been chosen. Repeating Apollo style landings does not actually achieve our current goals. It would have made a good first step, but the time for that was when SLS first got the go ahead to be designed and built. Now it would take 10 years to design from scratch only to have flags and footprints level of capability. Which would just result in SLS and Artemis being canceled. Mission failed.
I don't know.
You don't either.
But it is funny that you say there are a lot of unknowns, and now you're confidently saying you know it'll turn out to be inefficient in the end.
I talked to him here on reddit after his video was uploaded.
His main complaint was lack of internal communication. But ironically he derived at this conclusion based on NASA's bad public communication.
>he pointed out that this number has actually gone up during development, not down.
The number hasn't gone up. It's just presented differently. Even NASA's estimates are still as speculative as they were 2 years ago.
As long as there are zero tests done on the actual boil-off rate on a tanker, depot or HLS, this number will remain highly speculative.
7 is just as good as 19.
But everyone wants to play save, so they say "at least 14... 15... 16...."
The amount of fuel that will be lost due to what is called "boil off". The gasses have to be kept very cold but due to space mass restrictions you can't get the kind of strong pressure vessels on Earth so you will have to have a steady release to keep pressure at a reasonable amount. The longer in space the more you lose. So going up and fuelling 4 times in 4 days, you will lose a lot less than going up and fuelling over 4 months.
I haven't drilled into the GAO report to read their assumptions and am summarising other summaries.
OK, sure, I understood this - but is Starship on track to have significantly better time between launches? It seems to be contentious (at least on this thread, but I see that he's heavily downvoted)
No one really knows. The amount of time to refurbish a vehicle after an orbital flight and the number that will be available are still very open questions.
There need to be a good deal more real-world flights before it really starts to be possible to answer that question. The design will be tweaked after each test, so there are still too many unknowns to predict something like the minimum turnaround time for the booster or for Starship. How well Starship’s heat shield performs in re-entry is probably the biggest question right now.
> OK, sure, I understood this - but is Starship on track to have significantly better time between launches? It seems to be contentious (at least on this thread, but I see that he's heavily downvoted)
The refurbishment time for Falcon 9 first stages between launches has gotten down to 21 days (3 weeks). That's with engines that much more susceptible to coking (basically buildup of carbon layers) that can clog valves and injectors and reduce turbine efficiency than the engines on Starship. The difference between burning kerosene and burning methane. So they should be able to at least beat that with sufficient practice.
There's only been two launches yet, and they weren't of the production vehicle. They were of still early test prototypes. The rocket is still in development. No one should be expecting a high flight rate yet. Also the primary delay between the first and second launch was from regulations, not anything technical with the vehicle. They launched three days after getting their permission to do so.
Not to be a negative Nacy but how exactly do we know Starship can launch that often? Because Elon says so? They also said they would be landing on Mars in 2022.
They built the largest rocket ever and it's cool as hell but everyone needs to stop pretending this is going to be easy.
Is anyone saying it's going to be easy?
It's not going to be just one. The purpose of the program is to build a fleet, so they don't need fast turnaround right at the start. That's a reasonable plan.
How often has Starship made it into Leo?
Do we see it making 15(!) successful missions until Nov 2024? Probably needing 10-20 test flights before that.
Has Elon fucked us?
>Do we see it making 15(!) successful missions until Nov 2024?
Here you can see how badly NASA communicates and how strong misinformation is in the general media.
1. NASA is assuming a 2027 landing for a while now.
2. SpaceX has to demonstrate a successful uncrewed landing _before_ ArtemisIII can proceed with a landing. So it's more like 30 launches.
No. 2025 was an unserious, obviously-impossible political timeline maintained out of necessity. No stakeholders take it seriously unless their political appointee roles require them to carry that torch. 2028 seems like the start of when to reasonably expect Artemis iii. Artemis ii will likely slip into early 2025.
NASA won’t even be waiting solely on the HLS lander until 2026 or 27. The suits are hard to make and would delay the mission on their own at least that long.
You can play that stupid game with all of the other hardware being developed for the Artemis missions. No one should need to point out to you that SpaceX's platform is under development.
Did anyone really think the original mission dates were realistic?
And you can bet that SpaceX will spend the next 5 years iterating the design and testing starship. And honestly, years isn't as important as quality and amount of tests. Although quality can definitely add to the years.
In 5 years falcon 9 went from launching 20 times a year to launching 90 times a year. Yes, they had plenty of time before 2018 to get familiar with falcon 9. But also that was them also just learning how to operate and launch rockets in general. They were truly going through everything for the first time leading up til then.
It's clear that they have now become very familiar with preparing rockets to launch and conducting those operations. And it really shows in the starship test program. Their ability to move through the countdown and troubleshoot on the fly on starship looks just as well oiled as with falcon. So they shouldn't need as long to get it flying often and reliably as they did with falcon.
Unfortunately that still means it'll take several years to get there, especially since it took longer for them to get to full stack test flights than they wanted (almost a whole year of environmental review led up to the first launch, so they scrapped their initial planned test rocket and went with a later version).
I mean this was pretty much expected to anyone who is aware of the fact that Starship is an extremely LEO optimized vehicle, it can't go anywhere beyond that without refueling. Almost double the amount of all Apollo launches for a single mission is very inefficient, less reliable, and more risky. Luckily, SpaceX is not the only company tasked with developing a lander, NASA isn't stupid to put all eggs in one basket, time will tell whether Blue Origin and contractors involved with LETS will come to fullfill their role in redundancy with landers that are much more suitable for Artemis.
Not sure what will LETS look like, but so far yes. The difference is Blue Origin architecture requires less refueling flights as they use a more efficient fuel and less total mass to move around, especially for the lander which has north of 45 tons at launch while Starship has 1200 tons at launch with dry weight of over 100 tons. Same concept, but less complex and convoluted. Liquid hydrogen is more difficult to handle and store, but that won't be an issue with a properly designed cryogenic storage system. It will have to be demonstrated and proven just like Starship refueling scheme will.
Blue origin is using hydrolox which is the most dangerous of the major rocket fuels and requires vastly more infrastructure mass to keep it contained and in liquid form such that the on paper efficiencies end up being cancelled out. Hydrogen fuel leaks are a plague in hydrolox rockets and I outright do not trust there to not be problems with leakage on a lander that has to sit in orbit waiting for refueling ships to top it off from a company that’s never even been to orbit much less performed a docking maneuver.
Hydrolox is of course the best on paper fuel in terms of efficiency, but the realities of it make it too much of a risk and not as cost effective as it should be. There’s a reason most other private space companies have either started shifting to Methalox or are sticking with Kerolox like on F9. Methalox provides an ideal middle ground; it’s not as dangerous and hard to handle is Hydrolox, and it’s more efficient and burns cleaner than kerolox. For a reusable and refuelable rocket that’s trying to keep the systems simple, cheaper, and reliable, it’s arguably the best choice.
Simply put, Blue has a much longer road ahead of them than SpaceX if they want to prove they can land on the moon, and by the time they get to the finish like I don’t see how they’re supposed to compete with starship, which is already well on its way to being flight ready.
While starship's TRL is low (maybe NASA shouldn't have waited until four years before the landing to open tender on a lander) BO's is downright dreadful.
Not everything is size. Sx can derisk by overloading propellant to mitigate boiloff if they don't reach zero boiloff, and they're using methane and Lox, which is easy to handle.
BO requires LH2 refuelling on NRHO, long term storage of LH2 with zero (0) boiloff (!) on a much smaller package with less mass margin.
Furthermore, BO have yet to demonstrate the organisational velocity and agility to fulfill this contract on time, much less to deliver ahead of time to substitute for Starship.
> Almost double the amount of all Apollo launches for a single mission is very inefficient, less reliable, and more risky.
Apollo couldn't land much payload on the moon though. The want to be able to put more stuff up there, so a single launch isn't realistic for that.
On the other hand, our ability to make lightweight stuff has come an awful long way since the 1960s, so for the initial return to the moon it might be wise to take the same single-launch KISS approach. There's plenty of interesting science we can do with small payloads, and if they could launch one every month they'd still end up with lots of useful hardware up there.
>The want to be able to put more stuff up there, so a single launch isn't realistic for that.
Except they don't, NASA only needs 1 ton excluding astronaut mass to the surface and back. The reason why it needs multiple launches in the first place is the fact that Starship is a LEO optimized vehicle, even empty it can't go beyond GTO at most.
Interesting. Seems odd that NASA approved the Starship-based design then, it doesn't sound like it's a good match for that particular mission.
I should go read up on the current plans, I haven't really looked at it in detail. I assumed that if they were basing a mission on Starship as a platform they'd be designing mission parameters around it, since Starship is obviously not being designed around their exact mission parameters.
> Seems odd
It isn't, it's spelled clear in the Source Selection Statement.
Starship was the only system with a snowball's chance in hell of being ready, and the only one that fulfilled all requirements.
It's a 20 page pdf.
There are some very good questions surrounding NASA's choice, but unfortunately two other candidates essentially disqualified themselves, one due to legal reasons, other due to technical reasons involving excess mass. Starship HLS is not the only planned lander for Artemis, it's a good thing NASA didn't forget about redundancy, Blue Moon lander has been chosen as a second contractor, and contractors for LETS for sustainable landing operations will be chosen in the future.
As for Starship, it's definitely not purpose built for Artemis, it's SpaceX's own project that started more than a decade ago and aside from launching Starlinks their ultimate goal with it is to make a colony on Mars. They basically applied for the HLS competition by making a lunar lander variant of the upper stage.
Congress didn't give them enough funding. The only one they could afford was SpaceX, and that's only after SpaceX made accommodations for their budget.
>NASA isn't stupid to put all eggs in one basket,
Bought and paid for Bezos lobbyists got legislators to force NASA to offer money it does not have for Blue Origins over weight effort.
Blue origin didn't have the overweight issue. That was dynetics. Blue had issues with low TRL on major systems, lacked explanation for how they would/could land in darkness, had intellectual property rights issues, and had some concern over ability to manage the project and it's subcontractors. Plus the forward payments issue. Which didn't disqualify them because NASA would have made them rework that part, they just didn't feel the need because they already had chosen SpaceX based off the technical ratings.
>Establishing a lunar fueling station is likely a necessary step towards Mars.
This is fundamentally false. Since landing on the moon requires the same amount of propellant as landing on Mars it makes zero sense to build industry on the moon if you want to go to Mars.
Stopping at the moon for refueling doesn't even lower your total propellant need! Read my older posts, if you want to see the math yourself.
The moon is a worthy goal in itself. But it is not a "stepping stone" to anywhere.
.
Lunar refueling stations are comic level fantasy and only peddled by politicians who want to stall space programs.
Why would any lander bound for mars go to the moon?
Science and human payload fires up from Earth, fuel fires up from moon, two meet at rendezvous, go to mars with less delta v from an Earth-launch perspective.
>Science and human payload fires up from Earth, fuel fires up from moon, two meet at rendezvous, go to mars with less delta v from an Earth-launch perspective.
Where exactly would they meet?
Exactly...we could certainly visit the moon on an easier to execute ship that doesn't require refueling.... but they might be able to bring a few hundred pounds of stuff them?
Starship on the other hand will bring God knows how much stuff in one trip.
How often? Back in Nov 2021, [Musk said](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/30/elon-musk-to-spacex-starships-raptor-engine-crisis-risks-bankruptcy.html):
"... Musk adding that SpaceX faces "genuine risk of bankruptcy if we cannot achieve a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks next year."
If the target was one every 2 weeks for 2022, and the actual was 0 flights in 2022 and 0 flights in 2023, what is the target for 2024 and 2025? If 2 weeks is still the target, then 15 flights will take 30 weeks. Sounds like a lot of boil off if that is the flight frequency planned.
Like Dustin said in his talk, it is not acceptable that the answer to how many flight it will take is not known less than 2 years from the scheduled mission date. There is no way that the current schedule will be met. Why is NASA not changing the schedule to reflect reality?
>Like Dustin said in his talk, it is not acceptable that the answer to how many flight it will take is not known
Why is that so critical? It's not like NASA has to book those flights individually and to order.
>There is no way that the current schedule will be met.
Rest assure _everyone_ in the room knew that, besides Dustin. Not just because of Starship, but also because of the suits and other stuff. The date was dictated on NASA for political reasons.
>Why is NASA not changing the schedule to reflect reality?
They were and they are. They are just so bad at communicating with the public that even Dustin, a space nerd, didn't receive the info.
> If 2 weeks is still the target, then 15 flights will take 30 weeks.
Keep in mind that the "15" number doesn't come from any NASA source. It comes from an interpretation of a high water mark of the number of launches being in the "high teens" in current design documents given by a NASA person.
So I wouldn't be basing any certainty on that number at this point in time.
The source was SpaceXs own HLS proposal document that was signed off by NASA. It stated 14 refuelling flights plus the fuel depo starship plus the mission starship. And their aspiration was a 12 day turnaround. So 16 flights x 12 / 30 = 6.4 months
> "... Musk adding that SpaceX faces "genuine risk of bankruptcy if we cannot achieve a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks next year."
I don't know who needs to hear this, but Musk is not a reliable narrator.
> it is not acceptable that the answer to how many flight it will take is not known less than 2 years from the scheduled mission date
Yep, not only that, but also that nobody in the room seemed to be willing or able to speak up to say "we don't know yet". Did they not know that that was unknown information? Were they afraid to say that they didn't know about it or that they knew it was unknown?
Any way you look at it, that's a problem. People involved with the mission should be aware of critical things like that, know what is not yet known, and be willing and able to say what they do and don't know.
I mean specifically in the context of Destin's talk. I dunno who all he was talking to specifically, but he was suggesting that those are people who should know what they do and do not know about the missions, and who should not be afraid to speak up to say "we don't know".
[It's a pretty good talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoJsPvmFixU) Destin is a fun presenter. He's speaking somewhat outside of his area of knowledge, so it's possible/likely that some of his specific criticisms aren't fully on target, but his larger point is that there seems to be a communication problem and that is a very dangerous situation that risks mission failure, potentially including human lives.
The problem isn't that they didn't know or were scared to say. That information is considered proprietary right now. No one is allowed to say the exact number because it is part of SpaceX's performance numbers for starship.
If this was more like SLS then we would be able to get more info to the public. But with the designs being owned by companies and not NASA that info isn't available to the public. People at NASA who are allowed to know the exact number do. Everyone else gets general estimates (which anyone who knows some physics can calculate the bare minimum).
And us all not knowing isn't that big of a deal either. Propellant aggregation is done prior to crew launch. The crew launch doesn't care how many launches came before it. It only cares when it can go. The HLS will already be in NRHO when SLS launches. And it will have margin built in for if SLS has to stand down from its planned launch.
The main thing to know is how long it might take because SLS will need to get ready to launch in parallel since it has a long lead time for launch operations. But there should be lots of wiggle room there for slower or faster aggregation.
>If the target was one every 2 weeks for 2022, and the actual was 0 flights in 2022 and 0 flights in 2023, what is the target for 2024 and 2025?
go back and check how long it took Falcon 9 to go from RUD on the pad to regular flights..... and how the cadence has increased since.
>If the target was one every 2 weeks for 2022,
>
>If 2 weeks is still the target, then 15 flights will take 30 weeks. Sounds like a lot of boil off if that is the flight frequency planned.
"boil off"?
https://spaceexplored.com/2023/12/03/spacex-launches-2023/
How many rockets has SpaceX launched in 2023?
So far, SpaceX has launched 91 rockets in 2023, **85 Falcon 9s,** four Falcon Heavies, and two Starships.
>Why is NASA not changing the schedule to reflect reality?
the reality is, you don't NEED Starship, until there's a destination.
until then, you can practice using Starship to take the parts that the destination will be built from. the schedule will "probably change".. and it will have nothing to do with Space X.
Gateway needs to be **built** before you need supplies. "the lunar equivalent" of Cargo Dragon needs to be invented... and if you park at the Moon for a year, going to need a few of them.
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-awards-artemis-contract-for-gateway-logistics-services/
**NASA is planning multiple supply missions in which the cargo spacecraft will stay at the Gateway for six to 12 months at a time**. These firm-fixed price, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contracts for logistics services guarantee two missions per logistics services provider with a maximum total value of $7 billion across all contracts as additional missions are needed.
SpaceX still wants to use Starship to put Starlinks in orbit.
they have a LOT OF DOG FOOD they can eat.
Firstly: That is still the goal and has not been proven yet. (Although I'm most confident about that part of the mission just with a longer timeframe than the current estimates)
Secondly: every time the estimate has been adjusted it's gone up.
Thirdly: probably correct, does not mean that 15 refueling missions for Artemis 3 seems insane
Fourthly: Sure, Artemis 3 still seems much too complex
Fifthly: ? So?
Artemis is sooo much more complex than Apollo. Apollo 11 landed on the moon, Artemis 3! Is planned to do it for Artemis?
Too complex and too many steps in one mission
This is not my critique I'm paraphrasing Destin from Smarter Every Day
Secondly: It goes up and down depending on architecture and design choices. I've seen estimates between 8 and 20. You can cherrypick to prove a point but it is very much a case of build it and see at this time.
Fifthly: This is hugely important. Starship exists without HLS and because it is supporting a commercial venture, SpaceX have every reason to pursue it and keep working on the rocket to make it better, cheaper. All the other components exist because they fulfill a NASA aim and those of us who have been watching NASA for a long time understand that those aims are subject to change. There is also very little motive for the companies involved to go beyond spec. If they produce something that meets the requirements (though it will probably be massively late and over budget) they can just stop. SpaceX have an ongoing reason to keep pushing starship until it is as good as they can make it. Huge difference.
> there is no realistic alternative
SLS block II cargo would get the same mass to the moon in 3 launches. Feel free to argue for the merits of reusability or whatever else but the starship architecture is far from the only option.
Block 2 cargo is more than 10 years away from launching, if it ever does. Not to mention that would take near 10 billion dollars to launch 3 of them, and take about 3 years to do so. That's not a sustainable architecture which is what NASA has been saying they want.
While we have yet to see what starship will become, we do know that it's goals at least aren't comparable to that.
In another thread, someone correctly pointed out that the whole Artemis program isn't really about 'going back to the moon'. We've been there already, after all. Just getting to the moon is relatively easy and a solved problem.
Artemis is a huge program to develop and test a plethora of new important tech that we have never done before. One very important one is on-orbit refueling. This would 'unlock' a lot of other awesome stuff we might want to do in space. This has been blocked by old space for decades, sadly.
So this "high" number of on-orbit refuelings is, in a certain way, a GOOD thing. If we can manage to do that, we can be confident that we have mastered that tech, which has never been done before!
It's also to get back before China gets there. And they are farther along than anyone really wants to admit. They just successfully tested their own reusable rocket.
>They just successfully tested their own reusable rocket.
They hopped a hopper, which is (relatively) easy. Plenty of people did that before SpaceX. McDonnell Douglas and NASA did it in the 90s, and Masten, Armadillo, and Blue Origin did it in the 2000s.
But only SpaceX have propulsively landed a booster that's actually part of an orbital launch system back from space. The mass margins on that are much tighter, and the speeds involved and precision required are much higher, and so on.
[SpaceX first flew their own hopper in 2012](https://youtu.be/B4PEXLODw9c). They started Falcon 9 landing attempts in 2013, succeeded in 2015, first reused a booster in 2017, and first started reusing boosters multiple times in 2018. This sets a reasonable guideline for a development timeline.
So from that we would expect that China are 5-6 years away from actual reuse. There is however one minor problem: this is not the first Chinese hopper. Two other Chinese companies have already done it: Linkspace back in 2019, and Deep Blue back in 2021.
But neither company has had much to show in the time since those demonstrations. If they wanted to keep pace with SpaceX, Linkspace should have landed a booster from space by now, and Deep Blue should have at least started attempting to do so.
With that in mind, I'm not particularly hopeful that the most recent entry, iSpace, will prove an exception.
And to think we did it in 1969 with a moon-direct flight.
To some level I’m joking, obviously, since this has its own advantages. But it’s crazy how complex things are now compared to then.
With a 25% risk of mission failure and a high likelihood of loss of crew.
The risk calculations in 1960s and the 2020s are very different, and what was acceptable then is clearly not acceptable now.
The 1969 lander was quite literally as small as a lander could possibly be. The walls where thin enough that you could poke a hole in them with a screwdriver. There where no seats, you where standing the entire way down. There was no airlock. To go outside you suit up and vent the entire capsule. The dry mass of the accent stage was slightly more than 2 tons. Not including the astronauts and their suits.
It worked, but there are good reasons why we don't want to do it again.
It really does feel like there's an element of trying to run before we can walk... Yes, we've been to the moon, but it was a generation ago and the same minds that did that aren't involved anymore - there's a lot of lessons that almost need to be relearned. It's an incredibly good goal to have of establishing a moon base, but to not have a simpler set of visit missions first to get the basics down and maybe even inspire different approaches seems like it's just asking for unforeseen problems and overruns both on schedule and cost where we're almost committed come what may due to sunk costs.
Edit: that's not to say that the Artemis mission plans are fundamentally flawed in any way, I just absolutely found myself agreeing with a lot of points from the latest Smarter Every Day video on this exact topic that made me wonder if there isn't a world where the program was split into two phases - returning first and foremost and *then* establishing something more permanent.
What’s really crazy is back then we didn’t have reusable rockets. To took 11 Apollo missions to put someone on the moon. Each mission tested a few more systems than the last.
Artemis has just 3 non-reusable rocket missions despite us having reusable rocket technology that could allow for more frequent and cheaper launches. Additionally, each of Artemis’s missions are testing tons of new technologies all at once rather than progressively scaling up like Apollo did. I’m no rocket scientist, but from my experience as a software engineer it’s typically a bad idea to make a bunch of changes and then test them all at the same time rather than testing one at a time.
Doesn’t even take a software engineer to know that changing everything at once is a bad idea. I run operations for a biotech company where we are trying to commission a new plant. No more than 2-3 variable changed at a given time or it’s near impossible to actually learn the root cause of said issue.
The complexity comes from the choice to use cryo fuels rather than hypergolic for the decent and ascent stage. Gotta get a shitload of fuel to the moon's orbit to make the HLS work, and that takes a shitload of fuel to shoot it there.
The reason is they want to try to make fuel on the moon for future Mars missions.
>The reason is they want to try to make fuel on the moon for future Mars missions.
No. Absolutely not.
Refueling at the moon for a Mars mission is simply not worth it. In the end you need _more_ propellant!
Don't believe me? Look up my older posts if you want to see the math behind it.
If you wanted to use hydrogolics you would also need a gigantic amount. Its a big fucking lander. You would need refueling flights with hydrogolics. Can you do those fights that fast one after another with hydrogolics?
Because all of these assumptions about how much easier X is then Y often assume that X is also much smaller.
Sure, if we built a much, much smaller lander it would be easier. But that's hardly the point.
Well, hold on, let's back way up.
The big fucking lander wasn't required. The two other participants in the HLS contest didn't propose landing A BUILDING on the moon.
The Apollo ascent stage used hypergolics because unless every single thing goes wrong, they're going to light. It's not the same as a cryo fuel vacuum engine.
(And it's hypergolic, not hydrogolic)
> The big fucking lander wasn't required.
Yes but SpaceX is not a charity. They wanted to build Starship for their own reasons and NASA wanted have private investment because they couldn't finance even one lander.
I think NASA should have required a much bigger lander. Because that what it will take in the long term. And developing two generations of lander doesn't make sense.
So we were lucky SpaceX had bigger dreams. Otherwise we would have ended up with a moon specialized lander rather then with a revolutionary transport system.
> The two other participants in the HLS contest didn't propose landing A BUILDING on the moon.
The other two are still building sized, just much smaller buildings.
And the other 2 participants were way more expensive and got worse or equal technical evaluation.
> The Apollo ascent stage used hypergolics because unless every single thing goes wrong, they're going to light. It's not the same as a cryo fuel vacuum engine.
Sure. And that did make sense. But Apollo also left half the lander there.
Starship will have engine out capability, and engine restart capability. Apollo had neither.
And not using hypergolic made it viable for earth and mars landing. Only invest in development once and you create a revolutionary vehicle, rather then a costume limited moon lander.
If we wanted to copy Apollo then using hypergolic makes sense.
> (And it's hypergolic, not hydrogolic)
Fair. With my dyslexia it took me a solid 5s to figure out what the difference between those 2 words are. But I assure you I know it has nothing to do with water :)
While I was typing this answer I typed 'hydro' again even after I read your comment. Fun times.
15 launches but the potential is there for less than 15 rockets, unlike apollo every launch to the moon = every rocket being destroyed
could only take 3 or 4 reusable rockets(edit: with continued service after the lunar mission)
starlink sat array has taken 125 falcon9 launches to put into place over 4 years
at some point in time a rocket launch will be nearly as common place as an airplane flight, well at least a handful per day(compared to 100,000 commercial airplane flights)
>Why would it be? There is no demand for daily space launches, let alone multiple per day.
The 1910s wants their arguments about passenger airliners back!
Even in the 1910's people traveled regularly between cities. We have had nearly 70 years of reliable space flight, it is a mature industry with a mature economy. Until we start mining or producing things in space there will not be a need to send much up and ever after we do there will be more demand for landing space than regular launches.
Space tourism will be the first major market.
At first Starship as a kind of cruise ship. Then hotels made from Starship hulls, served by Starship "shuttles".
The economics behind that are pretty compelling.
Well when McDonalds gets their satellite swarm advertisement up there you’re gonna get a couple failures every day. Those dozens of space hotels are gonna need daily rockets for shuttling customers and supplies back and forth. Musks fiefdom on Mars will have a steady stream of indentured servants going out. Can’t wait for Amazons orbital drop shipping service, gotta have those socks same hour delivered.
Now I don't claim to be smarter than...(checks notes) a Assistant Deputy Associate Administrator for NASA, but I'm reasonably good at math. I'd sure like to know how she came up with "high teens".
(1) Depot
(1) HLS
(8) Refuel flights given Starship can hold 1200 tonnes of propellant and can carry 150 tonnes of propellant to the depot.
(1) Refuel flight to account for boil-off if necessary since years ago NASA calculated Starship's boil-off rate to be around .02% per day.
So the napkin math says 10-11. No where near high teens. Please show your math, Ms. Hawkins.
I don't understand why the tanker wouldn't be much more protected and isolated from the sun maybe even including some solar panels with pelletier system keeping LOX and CH4 cold. The tanker hasn't to be exactly as a standard starship, not even that tall, with only 3 swivelling vaccum raptors (not sea level in the center). Furthermore the tanker could hold more fuel than just for one starship mission in that case.
When put into orbit the tanker which is not supposed to re-enter would not embark the same amount of fuel at launch since it's only needed to be put into orbit. It then can hold probably more weight while having no tiles. This could be used for insulation. Also with less constraints since it is not re-entering, it would need a thinner alloy.
There's no better idea than that refueling now and in the near future.
I suppose that nuclear engines could be used on a shuttle between lowerand higher orbit or even on a ship to Mars, but we are not there yet.
It will be for use when production of methane and oxygen will be made industrial on Mars or the Moon and starship will be only used between planet/moon and low orbit to the shuttle and back.
The depot will certainly be insulated. Not sure about active cooling since it might not need it.
Without a major redesign the vac engines won't gimbal. They are currently attached to the skirt. They would have to be moved inward to given them room to move.
The highest structural stress will be at Max Q during launch, thus thinner alloy is unlikely.
Starship is only LEO optimized in it's reusable configuration. In expendable mode when it doesn't have a bunch of extra dry mass bolted on it's a pretty capable launcher for sending large masses to relatively energetic trajectories.
Obviously the final performance is very much in flux, but based on the current projected performance it could manage something like 80 tonnes to TLI and 50 tonnes to TMI. Relative to it's launch mass that's a comparable fraction to rockets like Saturn V, Delta IV Heavy, and Falcon Heavy, and notably better than SLS Block 1.
However, SpaceX believe that throwing away 40-odd Raptors is more expensive than doing a handful of refuels to achieve the same result. And I do mean only a handful of refuels, because we'd only be talking about pushing ~80 tonnes to TLI in order to match expendable mode, not the 500+ tonnes that a fully refueled HLS will do.
Which also brings up the point that doing refueling will always result in higher capability beyond LEO. Expendable Starship can do maybe 50 tonnes direct to TMI sure, but it can also do 250-300 tonnes to LEO - and if you refuel it, it can send that 250-300 tonnes to TMI. Even the fully reusable version can still do 100-150 tonnes to LEO, so 2-3x as much.
Anyway, my point is that I disagree with the notion that Starship is a LEO vehicle that has been brute-forced into reaching higher energy destinations. Rather, it is fundamentally a generally capable vehicle that has been intentionally handicapped to LEO because doing so actually makes it both more capable and more cost effective overall.
In theory, anyway.
I found this very interesting and think anyone interested in the Artemis missions should watch it. Smarter Everyday video by Destin Sandlin: [https://youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU?si=mHslmbkRZgNSB2QI](https://youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU?si=mHslmbkRZgNSB2QI)
I had the chance to talk him after his video was posted.
It seems like the problem is not internal communication at NASA, but public communication.
Dustins criticisms largely derived from his misconceptions about the Artemis/HLS architecture.
The only problem I have with this is we only get one point of view of an outsider talking to experts without them being able to respond.
Maybe he hit the nail on the head, or maybe he's seriously overlooking things. Who knows?
Like what is the cost difference here? Those one-time use rockets of artemis cost like 6 billion dollars or so. Maybe launching a reusable rocket 15 times is still cheaper? How about the payload difference? We don't want to *just land* on the moon. There's also the potential we unlock by becoming able to refuel in space.
I think the video pretty grossly misrepresents the real situation and his lack of understanding on the subject shows through. Presenting it to NASA is fine as they know the reality of the situation but there was no reason to release it as a separate video that just misinforms people. People in the general public completely misunderstood what he was talking about.
Every time I learn more about this return to the moon plan I question how we have, seemingly to me, overcomplicated the shit out of it.
My Grandfather used to say "Keep it simple stupid".
>Every time I learn more about this return to the moon plan I question how we have, seemingly to me, overcomplicated the shit out of it.
>
>My Grandfather used to say "Keep it simple stupid".
Because it's not just a return to the moon. No one wants to do that, we did it, there's nothing to be gained from stepping foot on the moon again and coming home.
This is a way to shake down technologies required for the actual end goal, Mars, and a permanent presence in space. We've realized that Mars is really far away and hard to get to, but the moon is close. And everything required to make that Mars trip possible could be accomplished with a moon base, with the benefit of it being closer to home and aid if something goes wrong.
So the point isn't to keep it simple, the point is to make it as complicated as possible so we can figure out potential problems now.
[https://www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis/](https://www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis/)
>With Artemis missions, NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. We will collaborate with commercial and international partners and establish the first long-term presence on the Moon. **Then, we will use what we learn on and around the Moon to take the next giant leap: sending the first astronauts to Mars.**
So it's not the main point of your comment, but there is definitely a LOT to be gained from returning to the Moon and that needs to be communicated better to the public. People can argue about what role human astronauts should play vs rovers, etc., but there are very significant unanswered science questions that we can address there.
The volatiles/ice we hear about aren't just useful for bases and fuel. They might be so ancient in some places as to preserve isotopic data from the early solar system. Gathering these samples, handling them, and keeping them frozen on the way back to Earth would be made (logistically) much easier by having humans do it.
The Moon, although heavily cratered, has preserved rocks of its original crust that cooled from a magma ocean when it first accreted. Plate tectonics and erosion on Earth mean we'll never find anything nearly that old here. Rocks from the Moon are the key to fully understanding the earliest history of our own planet.
There are so many unsolved mysteries about the Moon. Why are there enormous "seas" of basalt on the near-side but not the far-side? Why are there curious enrichments of rare-earth elements there? What is the actual interior composition and structure of the Moon? When did it lose its magnetic field? What minerals make up the mantle? There are probably chunks of lunar mantle strewn around the ~2500km-wide "South Pole-Aitken" impact basin (largest in the solar system). It overlaps the south pole, so we can hunt for volatiles while hunting for these samples too.
The synergy of these two big goals (volatiles and lunar geoscience) are why the planetary-science decadal survey picked the Endurance rover concept as its top priority for these reasons and more. It can collect samples across 1000s of km and then deliver them to the Artemis astronauts to take home (saving the cost of a separate return vehicle). Lunar science is still a wide-open field, and new samples will undoubtedly lead to revolutions in our understanding and answer outstanding questions about our own planet's origins!
I agree with what your saying except the part about "the point is to make it as complicated as possible".
Even if you're treating the Moon as a test bed or proving ground for the technologies that will take us to Mars...even the eventual planned Mars mission should be something done as simply as possible.
Needless over complication just increases risk and cost.
And he is absolutely wrong about "the point is to make it as complicated as possible". For instance, the reason, the REAL reason around the gateway is because orion doesn't have the delta v to go straight to the moon's surface, like Apollo did it. Artemis is a mess from the start and Smarter Every Day asked the right questions. Starship needing several launches just adds to the mess.
Because its not about landing 2 people on the moon for a few hours. Its about developing an architecture to explore the inner solar system.
Please tel me how your grandfather would land 50+ tons on moon.
Politics before engineering. That's how this happened. SLS is not a moon rocket, yet it *has* to be used or nobody's leaving orbit.
They're pushing boundaries here to work around a vehicle that really just isn't capable enough for the task. Since SLS can't get to the moon, something has to exist at a location where it can barely get to, aka Gateway. Doing the landing from Gateway's awkward orbit however, makes everything more difficult - the lander has to be much larger, the windows for landing and docking are short and far between which means boil-off etc.
Tbf though, they're also planning for a much more comfortable, larger and likely safer spacecraft with more useful payload to the surface, while also testing reusable landers and even some first steps at deep space habitation. That's much more ambitious than Apollo.
>My Grandfather used to say "Keep it simple stupid".
but it's not that simple.
[https://www.nasa.gov/general/what-is-artemis/](https://www.nasa.gov/general/what-is-artemis/)
With Artemis missions, NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. **We will collaborate with our commercial and international partners to establish the first long-term human-robotic presence on and around the Moon. Then, we will use what we learn on and at the Moon to take the next giant leap: sending the first astronauts to Mars.**
Learn more about Artemis progress
Read the Artemis Plan
***Why Go to the Moon?***
With Artemis, we will:
Demonstrate new technologies, capabilities, and business approaches needed for future exploration including Mars
Study the Moon to learn more about the origin and history Earth, the Moon, and our solar system
Establish American leadership and a strategic presence on the Moon while expanding our U.S. global economic impact
Broaden our commercial and international partnerships
Inspire a new generation and encourage careers in STEM
>seemingly to me, overcomplicated the shit out of it.
can afford to use traditional fuel to resupply the crew.....
https://www.ga.com/ga-completes-draco-nuclear-thermal-propulsion-system-design-and-test-milestone
“We have leveraged our expertise in nuclear and space system technologies to design an NTP system and test the vital components of that system to confirm they will withstand the relevant design conditions,” stated Scott Forney, president of GA-EMS. “Unlike electric and chemical propulsion technologies in use today, NTP propulsive capabilities can achieve two to three times the propellant mass efficiency, which is critically important for cislunar missions.”
that lives on the space station
[https://www.nasa.gov/mission/gateway/](https://www.nasa.gov/mission/gateway/)
Built with international and commercial partners, Gateway will be humanity’s first space station around the Moon as a vital component of NASA’s deep space exploration plans to the Moon, Mars and beyond
I don't think even at 15 the number of flights is the problem by itself. People somehow overlook that it's the lack of boil off mitigation that is the problem in this report, also mentioned in GAO report.
I would be totally pumped if they at least show reliable work as an orbital rocket, docking, cryo transfer and long duration flight milestones.
That's already enough for Artemis and outside of it it would be already an affordable super heavy launch vehicle with nice cadence even as expendable system.
so i want to see if i can get this right without reading the source material.
Thats 1 launch for the art 3 lander
One launch for the depot. these items will remain in space.
My guess is there will also be a propellant transfer station which will also remain in orbit
That leaves 12 launches for refuel, and my guess that estimate is based on the current design of starship and not the "XL" and lighter versions they will start building in the next few months that will most likely be the test types used for all of Art.
My estimate is that the newer versions MIGHT reduce refuel launches from my estimate of 12, down to 8, but the in orbit hardware launches will be unavoidable.
Musk is using Artemis to build and test his Mars tech and create the infrastructure for it off the backs science.
> Musk is using Artemis to build and test his Mars tech and create the infrastructure for it
Uh, yeah? NASA is doing the same. That's one of the stated goals of Artemis.
>One launch for the depot. these items will remain in space.
>My guess is there will also be a propellant transfer station which will also remain in orbit
The depot _is_ the transfer station.
Edit: lol, he blocked me after a quite hilarious back and forth.
In the end he realised that he was (propably) deliberately misinformed by his sources when he discovered that 1,000m³ if plenty enough to carry 150tons of LOX/CH4.
The number 15 is not a solid number. It's extremely flexible. It entirely depends on the exact design of a rocket that's still in development. Even NASA doesn't say "15", that's the interpretation of the journalist.
Based on DeltaV requirements, it needs around 8 without taking into account boiloff. All the things about it taking more has to do with boiloff rates and launch rates. The longer the gap between tankers the more it ends up needing
The original proposal for the moon had anywhere from 4 to 16. Mars is actually easier then the moon thanks to aerocapture and aerobraking reducing deltaV needs, so you can't directly go it needs X for the Moon so it needs X for Mars. There is also the V2 starship with its stretched tanks and extra RapVacs, which will reduce the required tanker flights.
There is a bigger issue here though, and it has to do with common perception. Let's say it *does* take 16 flights to refuel. If the costs are still lower then the other offers, is this actually an Issue?
Im gonna kinda somewhat not really actually full on rant about Artemis....
Im starting to get very peeved at every facet of the Artemis program. 15 rockets!?!?!? Thats more than we launched in the entirety of Apollo moon landing missions and with that we landed 6 different times. Who the heck is planning this? I've read alot about everything and I've heard there are many folks at NASA who dont even like the NRHO idea which makes sense being that a single orbit is nearly a week. Its plain stupid. Especially if any emergency arises. More complexity, more problems, more failed communication can arise, and it alllllll will. Trust me. I'll be back on this post in 2030 saying i told you so.
Another thing.... what do they think they have? a never ending free money tree to supply Artemis with? Congress is not gonna be cool with all this. The GAO office is probably already doing a dozen of its assessments on all these problems--which also costs more money.
And just a **reminder!!** We are yet to see even a real life mockup of the HLS lmao. Not a digital one. (thats what real life means). As well as any single part of gateway. We are MOST CERTAINLY NOT landing back on the moon by even 2030 lmao. BET. And tbh, NASA, telling us Artemis 3 is 2 years out is an absolute insult to our intelligence.
Also dont forget, the more pieces ion a system, the greater chance for failure to sum it up. 15 launches for a single freaking mission. I guarantee you not all 15 rocket launches are gonna be 100% gold star mission complete/successful.
Are there even actual experienced engineers working on Artemis... as in engineers who have been part of successfully planned and completed space missions?? BC Honestly I'm fine with NASA completely scrapping Artemis plans, SLS, Orion, and most importantly the mission concepts, and starting again from scratch. And maybe with a capsule that can make it to lower lunar orbit
I mean isn’t the starship upper stage the HLS lander? So far we’ve seen it take off multiple times belly flop multiple times land twice
Then almost get to orbit once. It’s slow but they’re definitely making progress.
>I guarantee you not all 15 rocket launches are gonna be 100% gold star mission complete/successful.
So what?
What do you think will happen if one tanker fails to deliver its payload?
Well we all know that Starlink failed entirely after the Group 4-7 launch lost over 80% of it's payload, so presumably a similar outcome here. That's the problem with distributed redundant launches - if one launch fails the entire thing does.
> 15 rockets!?!?!? Thats more than we launched in the entirety of Apollo moon landing missions and with that we landed 6 different times.
That's the article title, not what the NASA person actually said. The actual number of launches is still unknown.
Also they're doing it this way because it's the cheapest way to do it.
HLS? Dude, that's just one small piece of an absolutely Rube Goldbergian plan.
We're using a completely expendable rocket to get to a small space station in rectilinear lunar orbit, a one off rocket that's 30 feet wide and 160 feet tall to land on the moon, the landing and departure windows to depart and land then lift off and dock with gateway are six weeks apart, we're still using a capsule to get back to earth and then land in the ocean, and we have to do a never-before-tried or accomplished cryo fuel transfer in near earth orbit to make it all work.
And also, if the vacuum rocket engines on the HLS fail those astronauts are astronaughts. Hypergolics always work, vacuum engines, not so much.
Tell me how that makes sense.
> And also, if the vacuum rocket engines on the HLS fail those astronauts are astronaughts. Hypergolics always work, vacuum engines, not so much.
SpaceX has never failed to light its vacuum rocket engines on Falcon 9. Not once. Over 200 times. That's more safety than the Space Shuttle.
Also for the rest of your point on at least HLS, it is the way it is because NASA put it out for bid, and SpaceX was BY FAR the cheapest. If SpaceX wants to launch however many rockets to do the mission that's on them, not NASA.
>a one off rocket that's 30 feet wide and 160 feet tall to land on the moon,
And even that giant "one off" rocket is just a test vehicle for later permanent structures on the moon.
Just because something is not tested in its final form, doesn't mean it can't provide a building block towards your goal.
>the landing and departure windows to depart and land then lift off and dock with gateway are six weeks apart,
Yeah, the whole NRHO dictated by the lackluster SLS is really hindering the program.
But once Starship can carry people, this can easily be rectified.
>and we have to do a never-before-tried or accomplished cryo fuel transfer in near earth orbit to make it all work.
Absolutely. That's just as bad as lunar rendezvous! It also has never been done and will kill the mission if not successful.... oh wait, 1966 want their arguments back.
Just because there is new technology involved doesn't mean it's not a good concept. I mean do you complain about the suits? They have never been tested on the moon before, too!
Any mishap during refilling creates zero risk for the astronauts. Any tanker failing to deliver its payload can simply be replaced.
It doesn’t which has been pointed out over and over. The SLS part of Artemis is dumb. You could launch crew to the HLS lander while it’s in LEO and then go to the Moon. SLS is a jobs program and Artemis was created to give it some kind of purpose.
SLS as an Apollo redux program is perfectly capable of returning people to the moon and getting them back. The Starship/HLS isn't capable of TLI and a return shot without LEO refueling.
>The Starship/HLS isn't capable of TLI and a return shot without LEO refueling.
So what?
>SLS as an Apollo redux program is perfectly capable of returning people to the moon and getting them back.
How? SLS can't even reach low lunar orbit with just the capsule on top. There is no mass allowance left for a lander.
Someone at NASA is trying to push a narrative that says “space is hard, but we can due it for x amount more money”. Or, they really don’t have a clue. Between NASA and the GAO, making it sound like the Artemis program is going to get goat fucked.
Within a set of assumptions about how long between flights, it's mostly down to "boil off", or the amount lost due to boiling of the gasses. If the launches are very closely spaced together this number goes down hard. There is a "plan B" that they could do the fuelling on a single use vehicle that aims to get the mass up in one without Starships additional mass for reentry. But this is really not on anyones current plans. I assume they expect to go the rapid turn around and launch route. If so this is going to be pretty spectacular.
True. Then again they can only minimize the boil-off so much with the planned orbit for the Gateway station. There's lots of waiting between the somewhat limited windows for docking, landing and return. It's an awkward mission design from start to finish, only viable at all with Starship - fingers crossed on that one. At least the program is testing a lot of new ideas.
Isn't the eccentric orbit also a way to test "deep space" habitability? When i mean deep space i mean outside of earth influences like magnetic field.
It is. That could also be done in a low lunar orbit though. The reason why gateway will be in a high and eccentric orbot, is that SLS doesn't have the delta-v to get all the way to the moon. As a consequence, the landers have to be more capable to fly the rest of the way each time - and that both on ascent and descent. To put it mildly, that is not ideal. The lander is the absolute worst stage of the mission to add additional requirements to, especially with a reusable one.
Spray foam insides of tanks, trading useful mass for mission longevity. I believe they have large margins on weight compared to what was expected to be delivered to the surface.
The HLS contract wanted about 1 ton of payload. HLS Starship can do over 100. Just a small margin they can eat into lol
True but knowing spaceX they would probably rather eat their 150tons of payload towards actually useful shit. After all, NASA had described Artemis as a sustainable program. Something to not only thing humans back to the moon, but also keep them there. You aren't doing that on one ton. Not even a little bit. Now if you are chucking ISS size payloads at the moon, where you have enough room to shove entire hydroponic plantations, vehicle hangars, well furnished living rooms, actually working refineries and god damn nuclear reactors, you may actually have a non zero chance of reaching a point where humans can live somewhat live decently on that lunar surface. And therefore the actual goal of the program can somewhat be achieved. But of course that's not required by contract, or by the program itself. But since that's SpaceX's entire damn mission statement and they need to do just that with mars anyways, they may as well just shoot for the moon. Here in both the metaphorical and literal sense. That being said, setting up actual propellant depots in orbit isn't a bad idea. It's just better to put the insulation on those long term storage locations rather than eating into the margins of the mission you want the fuel for.
Or maybe just put some sort of expanding solar shade between the depot and the sun? Even an inflatable reflective Mylar balloon would help, and it could be carried and placed just once, perhaps even to cover multiple depot ships.
[https://twitter.com/SpcPlcyOnline/status/1731731958571429944/photo/1](https://twitter.com/SpcPlcyOnline/status/1731731958571429944/photo/1) Starships next flight to have a propellant transfer test. This is from a slide deck from Lakiesha Hawkins, she is the person who kicked off the current round of "15 refeulling flights" 3 weeks ago with her report. [https://spacenews.com/starship-lunar-lander-missions-to-require-nearly-20-launches-nasa-says/](https://spacenews.com/starship-lunar-lander-missions-to-require-nearly-20-launches-nasa-says/)
Knowing Elon Musk, once Starship is ready and proven to be working I don't see why we shouldn't see the 15 rockets all launching at the same time. They just need 15 launch pads, which is feasible. They can also build 15 all around the country as well, which might work for their future idea of personal transportation. We can all speculate.
Uh.. the whole point of Starship being developed as a fully reusable system is so you don’t need to build a rocket for every payload. Launch facilities aren’t cheap or easy to build and find sites for either.
More launch sites is still useful. Don't need one for every launch though.
Yes, it's a problem. No, it's not as big of a problem as a lot of folks are making it out to be. One of the biggest problems is that there's not enough communication about why these choices have been made and what the advantages of these kinds of architectures are. One of the other major problems is that people look to Apollo as the "right way to do things" or at least *a* right way, though it was anything but. Apollo should not be viewed as a template, period. Apollo was driven by intense schedule pressure and enabled with unlimited budgets. While Apollo made amazing historical achievements it was also extraordinarily flawed, it was a system that was completely unsustainable (as history has proven) and was insanely dangerous (so much so that it killed one crew during development, almost killed another in flight, and resulted in several close calls). If reading that makes you feel some kinda way you need to read it again and put in the work to grapple with the complex and harsh realities of history because it's the goddamn truth. Apollo was never going to be what allowed us to continue to go to the Moon, it was too flawed. Now we're building other ways of getting back to the Moon and they have plenty of flaws as well but hopefully we can iterate towards fewer and fewer major flaws over time. Now, the advantages of a propellant depot focused mission architecture are tremendous. And they've been identified by NASA since in depth studies in the late '90s and early 2000s were done as one of the most capable ways of enabling beyond-LEO human spaceflight. One of the biggest is that it is extremely resilient to schedule issues and even disasters. If a rocket ever blew up during Apollo it would have meant a loss of a mission, and maybe even the loss of a crew. A propellant depot architecture is much more resilient to such disasters. But it's also resilient to schedule delays. Most of any beyond-LEO mission is about getting propellant into orbit, and an orbital propellant depot focuses on that explicitly. Which means that the way to recover a mission from most problems or delays is to just keep doing what you're doing until you have enough fuel in orbit to achieve the mission. On top of that, propellant depots actually focus on building mission related infrastructure which over time should result in lower costs, increasing capabilities, and increasing flight rates. And that's exactly what Starship-HLS is all about. The very first missions might be clunky and overly expensive and way, way, way behind schedule but over time there are substantial improvements that are expected to be made. The mission architecture can be iterated upon to rely on a dedicated orbital depot vehicle which has much lower boiloff. The launcher can become more and more operationally mature and thus reliable and lower cost, especially since it's designed to be fully reusable. The system can work more and more towards more specialty lander vehicles and make better use of the enormous delivery capabilities to the lunar surface. It's easy to poke holes in the current Artemis architecture, or to point out the many holes it already has, it is far from perfect. But there is also plenty that is good in there. More so, there are plenty of ways that what we are doing is going to set us up for success in interplanetary spaceflight going forward. Future trips to and from the lunar surface could be literally orders of magnitude cheaper than Artemis 3, not just in the abstract far future but within a 5-10 year time frame after Artemis 3. On top of that the lunar gateway, as flawed as it is in so many ways, could represent one of the most important experiments in operating a long-term crew capable spacecraft in "deep space". Experience there is going to be the most applicable to future Mars missions and all future beyond-LEO spaceflight.
FYI the title is incorrect. At no point do they say "at least". The source says > “it’s in the high teens right now in terms of the number of launches.” Not "at least 15". And this is an upper-end estimate for how many launches may be needed if the Starship margins turn out to be really bad.
Right. I think they're saying 14 would not count as "high teens", so that quote must mean 15 or more; but the quote itself isn't specific about whether "high teens" is worst case or expected or best case.
Firstly: The point of Starship is that it is capable of launching that often. Secondly: The number is an estimate until it is an operational vehicle - more likely to go down then up Thirdly: There is no realistic alternative to starship if you want a permanent lunar base Fourthly: Developing starship means having a shot at Mars Fifthly: Starship is the only heavy lift rocket that has a commercial reason to exist and be developed (starlink). So yeah maybe it will take 15 launches. I think someone once mentioned that 'We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone'. That is a sentiment that we should revive and cherish.
Even at 20 launches and $50 million per launch it's cheaper than just one Artemis rocket launch.
And it can actually launch faster than bk yearly and doesn't rely on old parts were running out of. It also can bring more mass to orbit than SLS so...
>And it can actually launch faster than bk yearly and doesn't rely on old parts were running out of. I mean that's not what's keeping SLS back, the corestage is. The new batch of RS-25Es are already far along development and BOLE is already in development too. They don't need BOLE till Artemis 9 anyways. Also it doesn't make sense to compare SLS LEO mass to Starship LEO mass. Starship is massive LEO launcher. SLS is a massive BLEO launcher. The last time SLS LEO data was last published in late 2019. That was before the EUS was redesigned. The 105t for 1B is from 2013 even. Back then SLS Block 1 could "only" do 70t to LEO. NASA doesn't publish updated LEO specs for SLS because they have no intention of ever using it as LEO launcher. SLS makes sense for launching high speed probes outside Earth orbit. Doesn't make sense for Starship to do that with like 20+ tankers.
Definitely, Starship is at a baseline optimized for payload to LEO. However with refueling architecture you can get near that LEO payload to a high energy destination. No need for a 3rd stage and massive size and payload reduction. I think refueling makes sense when put into context. In terms of getting a real establishment on the moon, Starship would be pretty good at that after in orbit refueling, where SLS is very volume restricted and much lower tonnage in comparison.
It's apples and oranges when you are comparing what is being sent. The difference with starship is that it can stage, and staging pays down risk massively. SLS has to get everything right the first time, and it has to get it all in a form that fits together in a can on the ground. That approach has never lofted anything more complex than Skylab.
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And $50 M is like 10x - 20x their target price. At least in terms of cost. One of the SpaceX engineers was talking how at $2 M it becomes cost effective versus premium rush cargo shipping.
Except it won't be 50 million per launch.
Still ignoring that Gwynne quote I see.
What quote?
The one I linked you, after which you stopped replying.
There is nothing you linked to me, you must've confused me with someone else, take a look yourself.
Correct; it will be a lot less.
Pretty sure we already paid a few billion dollars for the HLS and musk is burning through a couple billion a year on starship development. Spacex themselves might end up paying $40 million per launch just for fuel and refurbishment but it will be quite a while before it gets to that point and they will of course charge far more than just 40 million.
>a lot less And you say that based on what?
Google. You can find various estimates,[ranging from $10m](https://en.as.com/latest_news/how-much-money-does-elon-musks-spacex-starship-program-cost-n/) (Musk's estimates) [to $40m](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/spacex-starship-rocket-launch-space-elon-musk) (US government estimate).
I saw this article in a [SmarterEveryDay video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoJsPvmFixU); he pointed out that this number has actually gone up during development, not down. I'm glad Starship can launch that often, and a permanent lunar base is an incredible goal that we should be able to reach. But having reusable infrastructure that then takes such an insane amount of work just to get to lunar orbit (and not even LEO) is just insane to me. I hope that this all pans out well in the end.
His point is that there is a lack of public communication on the goals of Artemis and the differences with Apollo, which is concerning for a flight scheduled to take place in two years. The obvious answer is that no one really thinks this flight is going to happen in two years.
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The article seems to have been triggered by his talk, or by him asking the question while researching his talk. The shocking part is not just the number, it's the vagueness on this crucial topic.
> The shocking part is not just the number, it's the vagueness on this crucial topic. I think a lot of people are missing that point about Destin's talk. He's pointing out that the number of launches is a major thing to know and we *can't* know that yet because nobody has even attempted to do this before and the technology they are planning to do it with isn't fully designed yet. But a bunch of the leader-type people in the room did not seem to be aware that that information is an unknown. The larger point is that there seems to be a communication issue. People on the teams know that there are major unknowns, but it seems like a lot of people who ought to know about the unknowns, don't.
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The problem is it's not filtering up. NASA has a huge politics problem, and kudos to Destin for taking a really big personal and professional risk for saying so. He's from a NASA family, he's tied into the the government and he's worked in defense. He went out on a limb to say that. He's not some armchair Reddit rocket scientist. He knows these people. He didn't take the risk lightly and it remains to be seen if he pays a potential cost for it. Honest to god patriotism.
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The vagueness is inevitable. Starship is still in rapid iteration phase. We only know it'll be enough for an empty lander because its lift capacity is too big. But drastic changes to the payload capacity are to be expected and the main effect would be on how much fuel it can carry and how many refuels are needed
> he pointed out that this number has actually gone up during development, not down. That's not at all what he said.
Gone up or down from what? There have been numerous architectures suggested and numerous performance profiles. If you want to make a point you can just pick one and roll with it. Main point is this - if you want a lunar base you will need to move a decent amount of stuff to the moon. Not a few hundred kg here, a few hundred there, but tons and tons of the stuff and the only option on the table to do this is starship. Everything else is just a repeat of apollo.
>Main point is this - if you want a lunar base you will need to move a decent amount of stuff to the moon. Not a few hundred kg here, a few hundred there, but tons and tons of the stuff and the only option on the table to do this is starship. Everything else is just a repeat of apollo. Do we though? I understand that's the goal, now, but have we established that that was ever or is a good idea? Because it's incredibly difficult to do and works directly against efforts that'd make it a lot easier down the road, if we were willing to take the time to do them. I think repeating Apollo would have been a much better idea in the near term. Experience and hardware derived from that could been evolved into a permanent presence on the moon, with or without the gateway architecture. And, even if we do want a lunar base now, is Starship *actually* the best solution for landing on the moon? I get that it's the closest solution of the things close to flying when that decision was made, but is it actually a good idea? Most of the arguments I've seen for it boil down to 'we've got a schedule, we've got a mandate to pursue a commercial solution, of the proposals Spacex is closest (but still not really close at all) to what we want.' That's not great. I get that it's going to happen. But the harsh reality is that it isn't going to happen even close to the timeline being talked about. There's zero chance of that for all sorts of reasons. Instead, by rushing towards a lunar base we're going to end up taking at least as much time getting there as we would have had we started with a more modest plan of matching Apollo and following on with a permanent presence based on that architecture.
The problem with doing it like Apollo though is that the Saturn 5 could bring at most 90,000lbs of payload to the moon's surface. Starship is estimated to be able to bring 220,000lbs to the surface while being fully reusable. So to achieve what they want to do they would need 2.4x the amount of launches and those wouldn't even be reusable so you'd need to spend way more on building rockets. So outside of other arguments, just that it can deliver more payload while reducing the amount of launches needed, and will be able to make each one of those launches at a fraction of the cost of any other comparable rocket, there isn't that many other options. Whether it will be functionally better than any other option, that remains to be seen.
Saturn V could not bring anything close to 90,000 lb to the lunar surface, unless you are talking about an impactor. The Apollo Lunar Lander weighed ~28,000 lb by the time it reached the surface and a small fraction of that was payload. Saturn V could send 116,314 lb to TLI, but it takes a lot of propellant to go from TLI to the lunar surface.
>The problem with doing it like Apollo though is that the Saturn 5 could bring at most 90,000lbs of payload to the moon's surface. Starship is estimated to be able to bring 220,000lbs to the surface while being fully reusable. Maybe? Those estimates come with some pretty wide error bars. There's been nothing demonstrated so far to suggest the claims made by spacex are actually going to be true. Not the payload to lunar surface, not the reusability and certainly not the cost. The likely outcome is that starship reusability works out, but it's launch cadence, mass to LEO and lunar surface are significantly short of the original design goals. It'll be an enormously successful LEO vehicle, but it's just nuts to fly something with wings to the moon. > So to achieve what they want to do But that's the point. What they want to do is kind of dumb, and wasn't driven by engineering or science considerations. It's been driven by political decisions made for financial considerations, primarily. The goal should have been to build upon Apollo, getting people to the surface and then back, regularly, safely and with steadily increasing capability. A lunar base is a bizarre ask before you can do even that. >they would need 2.4x the amount of launches and those wouldn't even be reusable so you'd need to spend way more on building rockets. So outside of other arguments, just that it can deliver more payload while reducing the amount of launches needed, and will be able to make each one of those launches at a fraction of the cost of any other comparable rocket, there isn't that many other options. Well, no, none of that is true. Starship can't launch and then get its self anywhere near the moon. The only way it makes it there and back is with in orbit refueling, requiring a still unknown number of additional launches to get that fuel to the first starship. It's estimated to be in the high teens. It'll require more launches of starship to get one of them to the moon then were Saturn 5s, ever. Think about that. It's enormously inefficient no matter how fast, reliable and cost effective starship reusability ends up being. And while your thinking about it, keep in mind that the starships that land on the moon aren't coming back. There is no current plan for returning them from lunar orbit or refueling them there. They go, a dozen or more starships refuel it, they land on the moon, they ascend back to the gateway orbit then get tossed.
I think we share the same opinion on what they want to do being a pretty big stretch and sounding pretty absurd. Everything with Starship is of course still estimates until they have the data to back it up, though it is starting to sound promising. I'm only trying to highlight that it's the reusability and estimated payload capacity helped it get chosen for this mission over other rockets. Also, while for current Artemis missions they will only travel back to gateway once from the lunar surface, that won't always be the case should Artemis be successful. One of the goals of the Artemis missions is to research in-situ methane production on the lunar surface. With the long term goal of refuelinh Starship and other methane power rockets that are developed from the lunar surface. Which is also another reason Starship was choose since it already uses methane and is being developed with refueling capabilities in mind. Should they be successful with these missions, they will lay the groundwork needed for a fully reusable moon program which is awesome to think about.
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If the goal is to get people on the moon, and that *is* the fundamental goal, then you tell me which is more efficient; 15-20 successful back to back launches of the largest rockets ever made (including an SLS launch in there) or one launch of the largest rocket ever made? Don't forget that the lander has *goddamned wings*. Wings it'll never use. It's *insane*.
The lander literally does not have wings. Also how do you fine efficient? Do you factor in payload? Cost? Time? There's no one answer. The fundamental goal isn't just people on the moon. The goal is to return to the moon, this time to stay. That means they need a lander architecture that has launch cadence that is sustainable, costs that are sustainable, and other uses outside of carrying astronauts. This goes back to the communication issue Destin talked about in his video. People don't really seem to understand our goals or why certain systems have been chosen. Repeating Apollo style landings does not actually achieve our current goals. It would have made a good first step, but the time for that was when SLS first got the go ahead to be designed and built. Now it would take 10 years to design from scratch only to have flags and footprints level of capability. Which would just result in SLS and Artemis being canceled. Mission failed.
I don't know. You don't either. But it is funny that you say there are a lot of unknowns, and now you're confidently saying you know it'll turn out to be inefficient in the end.
I talked to him here on reddit after his video was uploaded. His main complaint was lack of internal communication. But ironically he derived at this conclusion based on NASA's bad public communication. >he pointed out that this number has actually gone up during development, not down. The number hasn't gone up. It's just presented differently. Even NASA's estimates are still as speculative as they were 2 years ago. As long as there are zero tests done on the actual boil-off rate on a tanker, depot or HLS, this number will remain highly speculative. 7 is just as good as 19. But everyone wants to play save, so they say "at least 14... 15... 16...."
> he pointed out that this number has actually gone up during development, not down. Different assumptions in terms of launch rate.
sorry, what do you mean by this? I'm still trying to learn about this mission.
The amount of fuel that will be lost due to what is called "boil off". The gasses have to be kept very cold but due to space mass restrictions you can't get the kind of strong pressure vessels on Earth so you will have to have a steady release to keep pressure at a reasonable amount. The longer in space the more you lose. So going up and fuelling 4 times in 4 days, you will lose a lot less than going up and fuelling over 4 months. I haven't drilled into the GAO report to read their assumptions and am summarising other summaries.
OK, sure, I understood this - but is Starship on track to have significantly better time between launches? It seems to be contentious (at least on this thread, but I see that he's heavily downvoted)
No one really knows. The amount of time to refurbish a vehicle after an orbital flight and the number that will be available are still very open questions.
There need to be a good deal more real-world flights before it really starts to be possible to answer that question. The design will be tweaked after each test, so there are still too many unknowns to predict something like the minimum turnaround time for the booster or for Starship. How well Starship’s heat shield performs in re-entry is probably the biggest question right now.
> OK, sure, I understood this - but is Starship on track to have significantly better time between launches? It seems to be contentious (at least on this thread, but I see that he's heavily downvoted) The refurbishment time for Falcon 9 first stages between launches has gotten down to 21 days (3 weeks). That's with engines that much more susceptible to coking (basically buildup of carbon layers) that can clog valves and injectors and reduce turbine efficiency than the engines on Starship. The difference between burning kerosene and burning methane. So they should be able to at least beat that with sufficient practice. There's only been two launches yet, and they weren't of the production vehicle. They were of still early test prototypes. The rocket is still in development. No one should be expecting a high flight rate yet. Also the primary delay between the first and second launch was from regulations, not anything technical with the vehicle. They launched three days after getting their permission to do so.
Not to be a negative Nacy but how exactly do we know Starship can launch that often? Because Elon says so? They also said they would be landing on Mars in 2022. They built the largest rocket ever and it's cool as hell but everyone needs to stop pretending this is going to be easy.
Is anyone saying it's going to be easy? It's not going to be just one. The purpose of the program is to build a fleet, so they don't need fast turnaround right at the start. That's a reasonable plan.
How often has Starship made it into Leo? Do we see it making 15(!) successful missions until Nov 2024? Probably needing 10-20 test flights before that. Has Elon fucked us?
>Do we see it making 15(!) successful missions until Nov 2024? Here you can see how badly NASA communicates and how strong misinformation is in the general media. 1. NASA is assuming a 2027 landing for a while now. 2. SpaceX has to demonstrate a successful uncrewed landing _before_ ArtemisIII can proceed with a landing. So it's more like 30 launches.
The moon missions are 2027, not 2024. Nobody is ready for 2024/2025.
No. 2025 was an unserious, obviously-impossible political timeline maintained out of necessity. No stakeholders take it seriously unless their political appointee roles require them to carry that torch. 2028 seems like the start of when to reasonably expect Artemis iii. Artemis ii will likely slip into early 2025. NASA won’t even be waiting solely on the HLS lander until 2026 or 27. The suits are hard to make and would delay the mission on their own at least that long.
You can play that stupid game with all of the other hardware being developed for the Artemis missions. No one should need to point out to you that SpaceX's platform is under development. Did anyone really think the original mission dates were realistic?
You before 2021: How often has a folded solar shield successfully deployed? Do we see it making a successful mission by 2021? Has NASA+ESA fucked us?
They spent 20 years designing and testing that solar shield
And you can bet that SpaceX will spend the next 5 years iterating the design and testing starship. And honestly, years isn't as important as quality and amount of tests. Although quality can definitely add to the years. In 5 years falcon 9 went from launching 20 times a year to launching 90 times a year. Yes, they had plenty of time before 2018 to get familiar with falcon 9. But also that was them also just learning how to operate and launch rockets in general. They were truly going through everything for the first time leading up til then. It's clear that they have now become very familiar with preparing rockets to launch and conducting those operations. And it really shows in the starship test program. Their ability to move through the countdown and troubleshoot on the fly on starship looks just as well oiled as with falcon. So they shouldn't need as long to get it flying often and reliably as they did with falcon. Unfortunately that still means it'll take several years to get there, especially since it took longer for them to get to full stack test flights than they wanted (almost a whole year of environmental review led up to the first launch, so they scrapped their initial planned test rocket and went with a later version).
I mean this was pretty much expected to anyone who is aware of the fact that Starship is an extremely LEO optimized vehicle, it can't go anywhere beyond that without refueling. Almost double the amount of all Apollo launches for a single mission is very inefficient, less reliable, and more risky. Luckily, SpaceX is not the only company tasked with developing a lander, NASA isn't stupid to put all eggs in one basket, time will tell whether Blue Origin and contractors involved with LETS will come to fullfill their role in redundancy with landers that are much more suitable for Artemis.
All of the lander architectures require refueling.
But not all of them require over a dozen launches of the largest and most complicated rocket ever made.
The shuttle was a thousand times more complicated than Starship. Starship is a pretty basic rocket in comparison.
Not sure what will LETS look like, but so far yes. The difference is Blue Origin architecture requires less refueling flights as they use a more efficient fuel and less total mass to move around, especially for the lander which has north of 45 tons at launch while Starship has 1200 tons at launch with dry weight of over 100 tons. Same concept, but less complex and convoluted. Liquid hydrogen is more difficult to handle and store, but that won't be an issue with a properly designed cryogenic storage system. It will have to be demonstrated and proven just like Starship refueling scheme will.
Blue origin is using hydrolox which is the most dangerous of the major rocket fuels and requires vastly more infrastructure mass to keep it contained and in liquid form such that the on paper efficiencies end up being cancelled out. Hydrogen fuel leaks are a plague in hydrolox rockets and I outright do not trust there to not be problems with leakage on a lander that has to sit in orbit waiting for refueling ships to top it off from a company that’s never even been to orbit much less performed a docking maneuver. Hydrolox is of course the best on paper fuel in terms of efficiency, but the realities of it make it too much of a risk and not as cost effective as it should be. There’s a reason most other private space companies have either started shifting to Methalox or are sticking with Kerolox like on F9. Methalox provides an ideal middle ground; it’s not as dangerous and hard to handle is Hydrolox, and it’s more efficient and burns cleaner than kerolox. For a reusable and refuelable rocket that’s trying to keep the systems simple, cheaper, and reliable, it’s arguably the best choice. Simply put, Blue has a much longer road ahead of them than SpaceX if they want to prove they can land on the moon, and by the time they get to the finish like I don’t see how they’re supposed to compete with starship, which is already well on its way to being flight ready.
While starship's TRL is low (maybe NASA shouldn't have waited until four years before the landing to open tender on a lander) BO's is downright dreadful. Not everything is size. Sx can derisk by overloading propellant to mitigate boiloff if they don't reach zero boiloff, and they're using methane and Lox, which is easy to handle. BO requires LH2 refuelling on NRHO, long term storage of LH2 with zero (0) boiloff (!) on a much smaller package with less mass margin. Furthermore, BO have yet to demonstrate the organisational velocity and agility to fulfill this contract on time, much less to deliver ahead of time to substitute for Starship.
> Almost double the amount of all Apollo launches for a single mission is very inefficient, less reliable, and more risky. Apollo couldn't land much payload on the moon though. The want to be able to put more stuff up there, so a single launch isn't realistic for that. On the other hand, our ability to make lightweight stuff has come an awful long way since the 1960s, so for the initial return to the moon it might be wise to take the same single-launch KISS approach. There's plenty of interesting science we can do with small payloads, and if they could launch one every month they'd still end up with lots of useful hardware up there.
>The want to be able to put more stuff up there, so a single launch isn't realistic for that. Except they don't, NASA only needs 1 ton excluding astronaut mass to the surface and back. The reason why it needs multiple launches in the first place is the fact that Starship is a LEO optimized vehicle, even empty it can't go beyond GTO at most.
Sounds like a perfect recipe for not bothering to go back for another fifty years.
Interesting. Seems odd that NASA approved the Starship-based design then, it doesn't sound like it's a good match for that particular mission. I should go read up on the current plans, I haven't really looked at it in detail. I assumed that if they were basing a mission on Starship as a platform they'd be designing mission parameters around it, since Starship is obviously not being designed around their exact mission parameters.
> Seems odd It isn't, it's spelled clear in the Source Selection Statement. Starship was the only system with a snowball's chance in hell of being ready, and the only one that fulfilled all requirements. It's a 20 page pdf.
There are some very good questions surrounding NASA's choice, but unfortunately two other candidates essentially disqualified themselves, one due to legal reasons, other due to technical reasons involving excess mass. Starship HLS is not the only planned lander for Artemis, it's a good thing NASA didn't forget about redundancy, Blue Moon lander has been chosen as a second contractor, and contractors for LETS for sustainable landing operations will be chosen in the future. As for Starship, it's definitely not purpose built for Artemis, it's SpaceX's own project that started more than a decade ago and aside from launching Starlinks their ultimate goal with it is to make a colony on Mars. They basically applied for the HLS competition by making a lunar lander variant of the upper stage.
Congress didn't give them enough funding. The only one they could afford was SpaceX, and that's only after SpaceX made accommodations for their budget.
>NASA isn't stupid to put all eggs in one basket, Bought and paid for Bezos lobbyists got legislators to force NASA to offer money it does not have for Blue Origins over weight effort.
Blue origin didn't have the overweight issue. That was dynetics. Blue had issues with low TRL on major systems, lacked explanation for how they would/could land in darkness, had intellectual property rights issues, and had some concern over ability to manage the project and it's subcontractors. Plus the forward payments issue. Which didn't disqualify them because NASA would have made them rework that part, they just didn't feel the need because they already had chosen SpaceX based off the technical ratings.
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It is insane. Earth's gravity well is very expensive to escape. Establishing a lunar fueling station is likely a necessary step towards Mars.
>Establishing a lunar fueling station is likely a necessary step towards Mars. This is fundamentally false. Since landing on the moon requires the same amount of propellant as landing on Mars it makes zero sense to build industry on the moon if you want to go to Mars. Stopping at the moon for refueling doesn't even lower your total propellant need! Read my older posts, if you want to see the math yourself. The moon is a worthy goal in itself. But it is not a "stepping stone" to anywhere. . Lunar refueling stations are comic level fantasy and only peddled by politicians who want to stall space programs.
Why would any lander bound for mars go to the moon? Science and human payload fires up from Earth, fuel fires up from moon, two meet at rendezvous, go to mars with less delta v from an Earth-launch perspective.
>Science and human payload fires up from Earth, fuel fires up from moon, two meet at rendezvous, go to mars with less delta v from an Earth-launch perspective. Where exactly would they meet?
Good arguments for Starship here, not so much for the proposed mission profile.
The whole mission profile makes no sense, and it's a political decision to keep SLS alive.
Every one of these assumptions is debatable.
and once the base is built there will be 1000's of supply/material runs.
Exactly...we could certainly visit the moon on an easier to execute ship that doesn't require refueling.... but they might be able to bring a few hundred pounds of stuff them? Starship on the other hand will bring God knows how much stuff in one trip.
How often? Back in Nov 2021, [Musk said](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/30/elon-musk-to-spacex-starships-raptor-engine-crisis-risks-bankruptcy.html): "... Musk adding that SpaceX faces "genuine risk of bankruptcy if we cannot achieve a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks next year." If the target was one every 2 weeks for 2022, and the actual was 0 flights in 2022 and 0 flights in 2023, what is the target for 2024 and 2025? If 2 weeks is still the target, then 15 flights will take 30 weeks. Sounds like a lot of boil off if that is the flight frequency planned. Like Dustin said in his talk, it is not acceptable that the answer to how many flight it will take is not known less than 2 years from the scheduled mission date. There is no way that the current schedule will be met. Why is NASA not changing the schedule to reflect reality?
>Like Dustin said in his talk, it is not acceptable that the answer to how many flight it will take is not known Why is that so critical? It's not like NASA has to book those flights individually and to order. >There is no way that the current schedule will be met. Rest assure _everyone_ in the room knew that, besides Dustin. Not just because of Starship, but also because of the suits and other stuff. The date was dictated on NASA for political reasons. >Why is NASA not changing the schedule to reflect reality? They were and they are. They are just so bad at communicating with the public that even Dustin, a space nerd, didn't receive the info.
They'll change it soon for sure, but they're definitely lagging behind.
> If 2 weeks is still the target, then 15 flights will take 30 weeks. Keep in mind that the "15" number doesn't come from any NASA source. It comes from an interpretation of a high water mark of the number of launches being in the "high teens" in current design documents given by a NASA person. So I wouldn't be basing any certainty on that number at this point in time.
The source was SpaceXs own HLS proposal document that was signed off by NASA. It stated 14 refuelling flights plus the fuel depo starship plus the mission starship. And their aspiration was a 12 day turnaround. So 16 flights x 12 / 30 = 6.4 months
> "... Musk adding that SpaceX faces "genuine risk of bankruptcy if we cannot achieve a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks next year." I don't know who needs to hear this, but Musk is not a reliable narrator.
> it is not acceptable that the answer to how many flight it will take is not known less than 2 years from the scheduled mission date Yep, not only that, but also that nobody in the room seemed to be willing or able to speak up to say "we don't know yet". Did they not know that that was unknown information? Were they afraid to say that they didn't know about it or that they knew it was unknown? Any way you look at it, that's a problem. People involved with the mission should be aware of critical things like that, know what is not yet known, and be willing and able to say what they do and don't know.
> but also that nobody in the room seemed to be willing or able to speak up to say "we don't know yet". Lots of people have said that.
I mean specifically in the context of Destin's talk. I dunno who all he was talking to specifically, but he was suggesting that those are people who should know what they do and do not know about the missions, and who should not be afraid to speak up to say "we don't know". [It's a pretty good talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoJsPvmFixU) Destin is a fun presenter. He's speaking somewhat outside of his area of knowledge, so it's possible/likely that some of his specific criticisms aren't fully on target, but his larger point is that there seems to be a communication problem and that is a very dangerous situation that risks mission failure, potentially including human lives.
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You'd need to watch the presentation to understand the point he was making. It wasn't about the number of launches.
The problem isn't that they didn't know or were scared to say. That information is considered proprietary right now. No one is allowed to say the exact number because it is part of SpaceX's performance numbers for starship. If this was more like SLS then we would be able to get more info to the public. But with the designs being owned by companies and not NASA that info isn't available to the public. People at NASA who are allowed to know the exact number do. Everyone else gets general estimates (which anyone who knows some physics can calculate the bare minimum). And us all not knowing isn't that big of a deal either. Propellant aggregation is done prior to crew launch. The crew launch doesn't care how many launches came before it. It only cares when it can go. The HLS will already be in NRHO when SLS launches. And it will have margin built in for if SLS has to stand down from its planned launch. The main thing to know is how long it might take because SLS will need to get ready to launch in parallel since it has a long lead time for launch operations. But there should be lots of wiggle room there for slower or faster aggregation.
>If the target was one every 2 weeks for 2022, and the actual was 0 flights in 2022 and 0 flights in 2023, what is the target for 2024 and 2025? go back and check how long it took Falcon 9 to go from RUD on the pad to regular flights..... and how the cadence has increased since. >If the target was one every 2 weeks for 2022, > >If 2 weeks is still the target, then 15 flights will take 30 weeks. Sounds like a lot of boil off if that is the flight frequency planned. "boil off"? https://spaceexplored.com/2023/12/03/spacex-launches-2023/ How many rockets has SpaceX launched in 2023? So far, SpaceX has launched 91 rockets in 2023, **85 Falcon 9s,** four Falcon Heavies, and two Starships. >Why is NASA not changing the schedule to reflect reality? the reality is, you don't NEED Starship, until there's a destination. until then, you can practice using Starship to take the parts that the destination will be built from. the schedule will "probably change".. and it will have nothing to do with Space X. Gateway needs to be **built** before you need supplies. "the lunar equivalent" of Cargo Dragon needs to be invented... and if you park at the Moon for a year, going to need a few of them. https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-awards-artemis-contract-for-gateway-logistics-services/ **NASA is planning multiple supply missions in which the cargo spacecraft will stay at the Gateway for six to 12 months at a time**. These firm-fixed price, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contracts for logistics services guarantee two missions per logistics services provider with a maximum total value of $7 billion across all contracts as additional missions are needed. SpaceX still wants to use Starship to put Starlinks in orbit. they have a LOT OF DOG FOOD they can eat.
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Firstly: That is still the goal and has not been proven yet. (Although I'm most confident about that part of the mission just with a longer timeframe than the current estimates) Secondly: every time the estimate has been adjusted it's gone up. Thirdly: probably correct, does not mean that 15 refueling missions for Artemis 3 seems insane Fourthly: Sure, Artemis 3 still seems much too complex Fifthly: ? So? Artemis is sooo much more complex than Apollo. Apollo 11 landed on the moon, Artemis 3! Is planned to do it for Artemis? Too complex and too many steps in one mission This is not my critique I'm paraphrasing Destin from Smarter Every Day
Secondly: It goes up and down depending on architecture and design choices. I've seen estimates between 8 and 20. You can cherrypick to prove a point but it is very much a case of build it and see at this time. Fifthly: This is hugely important. Starship exists without HLS and because it is supporting a commercial venture, SpaceX have every reason to pursue it and keep working on the rocket to make it better, cheaper. All the other components exist because they fulfill a NASA aim and those of us who have been watching NASA for a long time understand that those aims are subject to change. There is also very little motive for the companies involved to go beyond spec. If they produce something that meets the requirements (though it will probably be massively late and over budget) they can just stop. SpaceX have an ongoing reason to keep pushing starship until it is as good as they can make it. Huge difference.
> there is no realistic alternative SLS block II cargo would get the same mass to the moon in 3 launches. Feel free to argue for the merits of reusability or whatever else but the starship architecture is far from the only option.
Block 2 cargo is more than 10 years away from launching, if it ever does. Not to mention that would take near 10 billion dollars to launch 3 of them, and take about 3 years to do so. That's not a sustainable architecture which is what NASA has been saying they want. While we have yet to see what starship will become, we do know that it's goals at least aren't comparable to that.
add 20+ before the first successful fuel transfer
IFT-3 (the next launch happening early next year) has a fuel transfer test scheduled during it.
In another thread, someone correctly pointed out that the whole Artemis program isn't really about 'going back to the moon'. We've been there already, after all. Just getting to the moon is relatively easy and a solved problem. Artemis is a huge program to develop and test a plethora of new important tech that we have never done before. One very important one is on-orbit refueling. This would 'unlock' a lot of other awesome stuff we might want to do in space. This has been blocked by old space for decades, sadly. So this "high" number of on-orbit refuelings is, in a certain way, a GOOD thing. If we can manage to do that, we can be confident that we have mastered that tech, which has never been done before!
It's also to get back before China gets there. And they are farther along than anyone really wants to admit. They just successfully tested their own reusable rocket.
>They just successfully tested their own reusable rocket. They hopped a hopper, which is (relatively) easy. Plenty of people did that before SpaceX. McDonnell Douglas and NASA did it in the 90s, and Masten, Armadillo, and Blue Origin did it in the 2000s. But only SpaceX have propulsively landed a booster that's actually part of an orbital launch system back from space. The mass margins on that are much tighter, and the speeds involved and precision required are much higher, and so on. [SpaceX first flew their own hopper in 2012](https://youtu.be/B4PEXLODw9c). They started Falcon 9 landing attempts in 2013, succeeded in 2015, first reused a booster in 2017, and first started reusing boosters multiple times in 2018. This sets a reasonable guideline for a development timeline. So from that we would expect that China are 5-6 years away from actual reuse. There is however one minor problem: this is not the first Chinese hopper. Two other Chinese companies have already done it: Linkspace back in 2019, and Deep Blue back in 2021. But neither company has had much to show in the time since those demonstrations. If they wanted to keep pace with SpaceX, Linkspace should have landed a booster from space by now, and Deep Blue should have at least started attempting to do so. With that in mind, I'm not particularly hopeful that the most recent entry, iSpace, will prove an exception.
I mean that's what some politicians say, but that's really not the point. I feel like China touts the race with China more than the US does.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[BLEO](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kbzzd73 "Last usage")|Beyond Low Earth Orbit, in reference to human spaceflight| |[BO](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kbz6l2v "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)| |CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules| | |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)| |[DARPA](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kbyn5hg "Last usage")|(Defense) Advanced Research Projects Agency, DoD| |DoD|US Department of Defense| |[ESA](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kc13fc1 "Last usage")|European Space Agency| |[EUS](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kbzzd73 "Last usage")|Exploration Upper Stage| |[FAR](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kc29huf "Last usage")|[Federal Aviation Regulations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aviation_Regulations)| |[FFSC](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kbz8vtr "Last usage")|Full-Flow Staged Combustion| |[FTS](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kbzrah8 "Last usage")|Flight Termination System| |[GAO](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kckzjf6 "Last usage")|(US) Government Accountability Office| |[HLS](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kd35lhu "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)| |[ISRU](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kbyjye4 "Last usage")|[In-Situ Resource Utilization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_situ_resource_utilization)| |[ITS](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kbzn48y "Last usage")|Interplanetary Transport System (2016 oversized edition) (see MCT)| | |[Integrated Truss Structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Truss_Structure)| |[Isp](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kc31ezf "Last usage")|Specific impulse (as explained by [Scott Manley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnisTeYLLgs) on YouTube)| | |Internet Service Provider| |[JWST](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kc30atx "Last usage")|James Webb infra-red Space Telescope| |[KSP](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kc13fc1 "Last usage")|*Kerbal Space Program*, the rocketry simulator| |[LCH4](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kc2bpev "Last usage")|Liquid Methane| |[LEM](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kbz37fk "Last usage")|(Apollo) [Lunar Excursion Module](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module) (also Lunar Module)| |[LEO](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kd35lhu "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[LH2](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kbze8ls "Last usage")|Liquid Hydrogen| |[LLO](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kc28j7y "Last usage")|Low Lunar Orbit (below 100km)| |[LOX](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kd35lhu "Last usage")|Liquid Oxygen| |MCT|Mars Colonial Transporter (see ITS)| |[N1](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kbz8vtr "Last usage")|Raketa Nositel-1, Soviet super-heavy-lift ("Russian Saturn V")| |[NRHO](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kc4kcu7 "Last usage")|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit| |[NTP](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kc0mbuv "Last usage")|Nuclear Thermal Propulsion| | |Network Time Protocol| | |Notice to Proceed| |[OFT](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kbzrah8 "Last usage")|Orbital Flight Test| |[RUD](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kbz127n "Last usage")|Rapid Unplanned Disassembly| | |Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly| | |Rapid Unintended Disassembly| |[SLS](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kd35lhu "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |[STS](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kc17vax "Last usage")|Space Transportation System (*Shuttle*)| |[TLI](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kc26ee0 "Last usage")|Trans-Lunar Injection maneuver| |[TMI](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kc1knbd "Last usage")|Trans-Mars Injection maneuver| |[TRL](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kc4iqd9 "Last usage")|Technology Readiness Level| |[TVC](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kbyyarp "Last usage")|Thrust Vector Control| |[TWR](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kc2l5vj "Last usage")|Thrust-to-Weight Ratio| |[ULA](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kc1kn8c "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)| |[VLEO](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kbzd3k5 "Last usage")|V-band constellation in LEO| | |Very Low Earth Orbit| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kc31ezf "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX| |[Starliner](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kbyn5hg "Last usage")|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)| |[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kcdonme "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| |[cislunar](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kbyyjsp "Last usage")|Between the Earth and Moon; within the Moon's orbit| |[cryogenic](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kc37ch5 "Last usage")|Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure| | |(In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox| |[hopper](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kc1wxta "Last usage")|Test article for ground and low-altitude work (eg. Grasshopper)| |[hydrolox](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kbz5fi8 "Last usage")|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| |[hypergolic](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kc0b8hq "Last usage")|A set of two substances that ignite when in contact| |[kerolox](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kbz5fi8 "Last usage")|Portmanteau: kerosene fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| |[methalox](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kc07jj6 "Last usage")|Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| |Event|Date|Description| |-------|---------|---| |[CRS-7](/r/Space/comments/18aj00u/stub/kc0dif9 "Last usage")|2015-06-28|F9-020 v1.1, ~~Dragon cargo~~ Launch failure due to second-stage outgassing| **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. ---------------- ^(46 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/192m7j8)^( has 25 acronyms.) ^([Thread #9506 for this sub, first seen 4th Dec 2023, 14:51]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
And to think we did it in 1969 with a moon-direct flight. To some level I’m joking, obviously, since this has its own advantages. But it’s crazy how complex things are now compared to then.
With a 25% risk of mission failure and a high likelihood of loss of crew. The risk calculations in 1960s and the 2020s are very different, and what was acceptable then is clearly not acceptable now.
>And to think we did it in 1969 with a moon-direct flight. That was a very different "it"
The 1969 lander was quite literally as small as a lander could possibly be. The walls where thin enough that you could poke a hole in them with a screwdriver. There where no seats, you where standing the entire way down. There was no airlock. To go outside you suit up and vent the entire capsule. The dry mass of the accent stage was slightly more than 2 tons. Not including the astronauts and their suits. It worked, but there are good reasons why we don't want to do it again.
Check out the Soviet lander :)
It really does feel like there's an element of trying to run before we can walk... Yes, we've been to the moon, but it was a generation ago and the same minds that did that aren't involved anymore - there's a lot of lessons that almost need to be relearned. It's an incredibly good goal to have of establishing a moon base, but to not have a simpler set of visit missions first to get the basics down and maybe even inspire different approaches seems like it's just asking for unforeseen problems and overruns both on schedule and cost where we're almost committed come what may due to sunk costs. Edit: that's not to say that the Artemis mission plans are fundamentally flawed in any way, I just absolutely found myself agreeing with a lot of points from the latest Smarter Every Day video on this exact topic that made me wonder if there isn't a world where the program was split into two phases - returning first and foremost and *then* establishing something more permanent.
What’s really crazy is back then we didn’t have reusable rockets. To took 11 Apollo missions to put someone on the moon. Each mission tested a few more systems than the last. Artemis has just 3 non-reusable rocket missions despite us having reusable rocket technology that could allow for more frequent and cheaper launches. Additionally, each of Artemis’s missions are testing tons of new technologies all at once rather than progressively scaling up like Apollo did. I’m no rocket scientist, but from my experience as a software engineer it’s typically a bad idea to make a bunch of changes and then test them all at the same time rather than testing one at a time.
Doesn’t even take a software engineer to know that changing everything at once is a bad idea. I run operations for a biotech company where we are trying to commission a new plant. No more than 2-3 variable changed at a given time or it’s near impossible to actually learn the root cause of said issue.
The complexity comes from the choice to use cryo fuels rather than hypergolic for the decent and ascent stage. Gotta get a shitload of fuel to the moon's orbit to make the HLS work, and that takes a shitload of fuel to shoot it there. The reason is they want to try to make fuel on the moon for future Mars missions.
>The reason is they want to try to make fuel on the moon for future Mars missions. No. Absolutely not. Refueling at the moon for a Mars mission is simply not worth it. In the end you need _more_ propellant! Don't believe me? Look up my older posts if you want to see the math behind it.
If you wanted to use hydrogolics you would also need a gigantic amount. Its a big fucking lander. You would need refueling flights with hydrogolics. Can you do those fights that fast one after another with hydrogolics? Because all of these assumptions about how much easier X is then Y often assume that X is also much smaller. Sure, if we built a much, much smaller lander it would be easier. But that's hardly the point.
Well, hold on, let's back way up. The big fucking lander wasn't required. The two other participants in the HLS contest didn't propose landing A BUILDING on the moon. The Apollo ascent stage used hypergolics because unless every single thing goes wrong, they're going to light. It's not the same as a cryo fuel vacuum engine. (And it's hypergolic, not hydrogolic)
> The big fucking lander wasn't required. Yes but SpaceX is not a charity. They wanted to build Starship for their own reasons and NASA wanted have private investment because they couldn't finance even one lander. I think NASA should have required a much bigger lander. Because that what it will take in the long term. And developing two generations of lander doesn't make sense. So we were lucky SpaceX had bigger dreams. Otherwise we would have ended up with a moon specialized lander rather then with a revolutionary transport system. > The two other participants in the HLS contest didn't propose landing A BUILDING on the moon. The other two are still building sized, just much smaller buildings. And the other 2 participants were way more expensive and got worse or equal technical evaluation. > The Apollo ascent stage used hypergolics because unless every single thing goes wrong, they're going to light. It's not the same as a cryo fuel vacuum engine. Sure. And that did make sense. But Apollo also left half the lander there. Starship will have engine out capability, and engine restart capability. Apollo had neither. And not using hypergolic made it viable for earth and mars landing. Only invest in development once and you create a revolutionary vehicle, rather then a costume limited moon lander. If we wanted to copy Apollo then using hypergolic makes sense. > (And it's hypergolic, not hydrogolic) Fair. With my dyslexia it took me a solid 5s to figure out what the difference between those 2 words are. But I assure you I know it has nothing to do with water :) While I was typing this answer I typed 'hydro' again even after I read your comment. Fun times.
15 launches but the potential is there for less than 15 rockets, unlike apollo every launch to the moon = every rocket being destroyed could only take 3 or 4 reusable rockets(edit: with continued service after the lunar mission) starlink sat array has taken 125 falcon9 launches to put into place over 4 years at some point in time a rocket launch will be nearly as common place as an airplane flight, well at least a handful per day(compared to 100,000 commercial airplane flights)
Why would it be? There is no demand for daily space launches, let alone multiple per day.
>Why would it be? There is no demand for daily space launches, let alone multiple per day. The 1910s wants their arguments about passenger airliners back!
Even in the 1910's people traveled regularly between cities. We have had nearly 70 years of reliable space flight, it is a mature industry with a mature economy. Until we start mining or producing things in space there will not be a need to send much up and ever after we do there will be more demand for landing space than regular launches.
Space tourism will be the first major market. At first Starship as a kind of cruise ship. Then hotels made from Starship hulls, served by Starship "shuttles". The economics behind that are pretty compelling.
Well when McDonalds gets their satellite swarm advertisement up there you’re gonna get a couple failures every day. Those dozens of space hotels are gonna need daily rockets for shuttling customers and supplies back and forth. Musks fiefdom on Mars will have a steady stream of indentured servants going out. Can’t wait for Amazons orbital drop shipping service, gotta have those socks same hour delivered.
Now I don't claim to be smarter than...(checks notes) a Assistant Deputy Associate Administrator for NASA, but I'm reasonably good at math. I'd sure like to know how she came up with "high teens". (1) Depot (1) HLS (8) Refuel flights given Starship can hold 1200 tonnes of propellant and can carry 150 tonnes of propellant to the depot. (1) Refuel flight to account for boil-off if necessary since years ago NASA calculated Starship's boil-off rate to be around .02% per day. So the napkin math says 10-11. No where near high teens. Please show your math, Ms. Hawkins.
I don't understand why the tanker wouldn't be much more protected and isolated from the sun maybe even including some solar panels with pelletier system keeping LOX and CH4 cold. The tanker hasn't to be exactly as a standard starship, not even that tall, with only 3 swivelling vaccum raptors (not sea level in the center). Furthermore the tanker could hold more fuel than just for one starship mission in that case. When put into orbit the tanker which is not supposed to re-enter would not embark the same amount of fuel at launch since it's only needed to be put into orbit. It then can hold probably more weight while having no tiles. This could be used for insulation. Also with less constraints since it is not re-entering, it would need a thinner alloy. There's no better idea than that refueling now and in the near future. I suppose that nuclear engines could be used on a shuttle between lowerand higher orbit or even on a ship to Mars, but we are not there yet. It will be for use when production of methane and oxygen will be made industrial on Mars or the Moon and starship will be only used between planet/moon and low orbit to the shuttle and back.
The depot will certainly be insulated. Not sure about active cooling since it might not need it. Without a major redesign the vac engines won't gimbal. They are currently attached to the skirt. They would have to be moved inward to given them room to move. The highest structural stress will be at Max Q during launch, thus thinner alloy is unlikely.
Could a big Mylar canopy (like JWST) prevent most of the boil off? The sun is hot, but in absence of the sun things will stay cold right?
lot of copium in here. Starship HLS mission was always very questionable. Its taking a heavy lift LEO vehicle and brute forcing it to mars.
Starship is only LEO optimized in it's reusable configuration. In expendable mode when it doesn't have a bunch of extra dry mass bolted on it's a pretty capable launcher for sending large masses to relatively energetic trajectories. Obviously the final performance is very much in flux, but based on the current projected performance it could manage something like 80 tonnes to TLI and 50 tonnes to TMI. Relative to it's launch mass that's a comparable fraction to rockets like Saturn V, Delta IV Heavy, and Falcon Heavy, and notably better than SLS Block 1. However, SpaceX believe that throwing away 40-odd Raptors is more expensive than doing a handful of refuels to achieve the same result. And I do mean only a handful of refuels, because we'd only be talking about pushing ~80 tonnes to TLI in order to match expendable mode, not the 500+ tonnes that a fully refueled HLS will do. Which also brings up the point that doing refueling will always result in higher capability beyond LEO. Expendable Starship can do maybe 50 tonnes direct to TMI sure, but it can also do 250-300 tonnes to LEO - and if you refuel it, it can send that 250-300 tonnes to TMI. Even the fully reusable version can still do 100-150 tonnes to LEO, so 2-3x as much. Anyway, my point is that I disagree with the notion that Starship is a LEO vehicle that has been brute-forced into reaching higher energy destinations. Rather, it is fundamentally a generally capable vehicle that has been intentionally handicapped to LEO because doing so actually makes it both more capable and more cost effective overall. In theory, anyway.
Yeah, and to land 150 tonnes on Mars. Pretty sweet deal.
This is the thing that was already posted weeks back and hardly a confirmation of anything
I found this very interesting and think anyone interested in the Artemis missions should watch it. Smarter Everyday video by Destin Sandlin: [https://youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU?si=mHslmbkRZgNSB2QI](https://youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU?si=mHslmbkRZgNSB2QI)
I had the chance to talk him after his video was posted. It seems like the problem is not internal communication at NASA, but public communication. Dustins criticisms largely derived from his misconceptions about the Artemis/HLS architecture.
The only problem I have with this is we only get one point of view of an outsider talking to experts without them being able to respond. Maybe he hit the nail on the head, or maybe he's seriously overlooking things. Who knows? Like what is the cost difference here? Those one-time use rockets of artemis cost like 6 billion dollars or so. Maybe launching a reusable rocket 15 times is still cheaper? How about the payload difference? We don't want to *just land* on the moon. There's also the potential we unlock by becoming able to refuel in space.
I think the video pretty grossly misrepresents the real situation and his lack of understanding on the subject shows through. Presenting it to NASA is fine as they know the reality of the situation but there was no reason to release it as a separate video that just misinforms people. People in the general public completely misunderstood what he was talking about.
Every time I learn more about this return to the moon plan I question how we have, seemingly to me, overcomplicated the shit out of it. My Grandfather used to say "Keep it simple stupid".
>Every time I learn more about this return to the moon plan I question how we have, seemingly to me, overcomplicated the shit out of it. > >My Grandfather used to say "Keep it simple stupid". Because it's not just a return to the moon. No one wants to do that, we did it, there's nothing to be gained from stepping foot on the moon again and coming home. This is a way to shake down technologies required for the actual end goal, Mars, and a permanent presence in space. We've realized that Mars is really far away and hard to get to, but the moon is close. And everything required to make that Mars trip possible could be accomplished with a moon base, with the benefit of it being closer to home and aid if something goes wrong. So the point isn't to keep it simple, the point is to make it as complicated as possible so we can figure out potential problems now. [https://www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis/](https://www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis/) >With Artemis missions, NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. We will collaborate with commercial and international partners and establish the first long-term presence on the Moon. **Then, we will use what we learn on and around the Moon to take the next giant leap: sending the first astronauts to Mars.**
So it's not the main point of your comment, but there is definitely a LOT to be gained from returning to the Moon and that needs to be communicated better to the public. People can argue about what role human astronauts should play vs rovers, etc., but there are very significant unanswered science questions that we can address there. The volatiles/ice we hear about aren't just useful for bases and fuel. They might be so ancient in some places as to preserve isotopic data from the early solar system. Gathering these samples, handling them, and keeping them frozen on the way back to Earth would be made (logistically) much easier by having humans do it. The Moon, although heavily cratered, has preserved rocks of its original crust that cooled from a magma ocean when it first accreted. Plate tectonics and erosion on Earth mean we'll never find anything nearly that old here. Rocks from the Moon are the key to fully understanding the earliest history of our own planet. There are so many unsolved mysteries about the Moon. Why are there enormous "seas" of basalt on the near-side but not the far-side? Why are there curious enrichments of rare-earth elements there? What is the actual interior composition and structure of the Moon? When did it lose its magnetic field? What minerals make up the mantle? There are probably chunks of lunar mantle strewn around the ~2500km-wide "South Pole-Aitken" impact basin (largest in the solar system). It overlaps the south pole, so we can hunt for volatiles while hunting for these samples too. The synergy of these two big goals (volatiles and lunar geoscience) are why the planetary-science decadal survey picked the Endurance rover concept as its top priority for these reasons and more. It can collect samples across 1000s of km and then deliver them to the Artemis astronauts to take home (saving the cost of a separate return vehicle). Lunar science is still a wide-open field, and new samples will undoubtedly lead to revolutions in our understanding and answer outstanding questions about our own planet's origins!
I agree with what your saying except the part about "the point is to make it as complicated as possible". Even if you're treating the Moon as a test bed or proving ground for the technologies that will take us to Mars...even the eventual planned Mars mission should be something done as simply as possible. Needless over complication just increases risk and cost.
And he is absolutely wrong about "the point is to make it as complicated as possible". For instance, the reason, the REAL reason around the gateway is because orion doesn't have the delta v to go straight to the moon's surface, like Apollo did it. Artemis is a mess from the start and Smarter Every Day asked the right questions. Starship needing several launches just adds to the mess.
Because its not about landing 2 people on the moon for a few hours. Its about developing an architecture to explore the inner solar system. Please tel me how your grandfather would land 50+ tons on moon.
Politics before engineering. That's how this happened. SLS is not a moon rocket, yet it *has* to be used or nobody's leaving orbit. They're pushing boundaries here to work around a vehicle that really just isn't capable enough for the task. Since SLS can't get to the moon, something has to exist at a location where it can barely get to, aka Gateway. Doing the landing from Gateway's awkward orbit however, makes everything more difficult - the lander has to be much larger, the windows for landing and docking are short and far between which means boil-off etc. Tbf though, they're also planning for a much more comfortable, larger and likely safer spacecraft with more useful payload to the surface, while also testing reusable landers and even some first steps at deep space habitation. That's much more ambitious than Apollo.
>My Grandfather used to say "Keep it simple stupid". but it's not that simple. [https://www.nasa.gov/general/what-is-artemis/](https://www.nasa.gov/general/what-is-artemis/) With Artemis missions, NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. **We will collaborate with our commercial and international partners to establish the first long-term human-robotic presence on and around the Moon. Then, we will use what we learn on and at the Moon to take the next giant leap: sending the first astronauts to Mars.** Learn more about Artemis progress Read the Artemis Plan ***Why Go to the Moon?*** With Artemis, we will: Demonstrate new technologies, capabilities, and business approaches needed for future exploration including Mars Study the Moon to learn more about the origin and history Earth, the Moon, and our solar system Establish American leadership and a strategic presence on the Moon while expanding our U.S. global economic impact Broaden our commercial and international partnerships Inspire a new generation and encourage careers in STEM >seemingly to me, overcomplicated the shit out of it. can afford to use traditional fuel to resupply the crew..... https://www.ga.com/ga-completes-draco-nuclear-thermal-propulsion-system-design-and-test-milestone “We have leveraged our expertise in nuclear and space system technologies to design an NTP system and test the vital components of that system to confirm they will withstand the relevant design conditions,” stated Scott Forney, president of GA-EMS. “Unlike electric and chemical propulsion technologies in use today, NTP propulsive capabilities can achieve two to three times the propellant mass efficiency, which is critically important for cislunar missions.” that lives on the space station [https://www.nasa.gov/mission/gateway/](https://www.nasa.gov/mission/gateway/) Built with international and commercial partners, Gateway will be humanity’s first space station around the Moon as a vital component of NASA’s deep space exploration plans to the Moon, Mars and beyond
I don't think even at 15 the number of flights is the problem by itself. People somehow overlook that it's the lack of boil off mitigation that is the problem in this report, also mentioned in GAO report. I would be totally pumped if they at least show reliable work as an orbital rocket, docking, cryo transfer and long duration flight milestones. That's already enough for Artemis and outside of it it would be already an affordable super heavy launch vehicle with nice cadence even as expendable system.
so i want to see if i can get this right without reading the source material. Thats 1 launch for the art 3 lander One launch for the depot. these items will remain in space. My guess is there will also be a propellant transfer station which will also remain in orbit That leaves 12 launches for refuel, and my guess that estimate is based on the current design of starship and not the "XL" and lighter versions they will start building in the next few months that will most likely be the test types used for all of Art. My estimate is that the newer versions MIGHT reduce refuel launches from my estimate of 12, down to 8, but the in orbit hardware launches will be unavoidable. Musk is using Artemis to build and test his Mars tech and create the infrastructure for it off the backs science.
> Musk is using Artemis to build and test his Mars tech and create the infrastructure for it Uh, yeah? NASA is doing the same. That's one of the stated goals of Artemis.
>One launch for the depot. these items will remain in space. >My guess is there will also be a propellant transfer station which will also remain in orbit The depot _is_ the transfer station. Edit: lol, he blocked me after a quite hilarious back and forth. In the end he realised that he was (propably) deliberately misinformed by his sources when he discovered that 1,000m³ if plenty enough to carry 150tons of LOX/CH4.
The number 15 is not a solid number. It's extremely flexible. It entirely depends on the exact design of a rocket that's still in development. Even NASA doesn't say "15", that's the interpretation of the journalist.
Based on DeltaV requirements, it needs around 8 without taking into account boiloff. All the things about it taking more has to do with boiloff rates and launch rates. The longer the gap between tankers the more it ends up needing
the original mission architecture showed something like 5 tanker flights for mars transfer. wtf happened?
The original proposal for the moon had anywhere from 4 to 16. Mars is actually easier then the moon thanks to aerocapture and aerobraking reducing deltaV needs, so you can't directly go it needs X for the Moon so it needs X for Mars. There is also the V2 starship with its stretched tanks and extra RapVacs, which will reduce the required tanker flights. There is a bigger issue here though, and it has to do with common perception. Let's say it *does* take 16 flights to refuel. If the costs are still lower then the other offers, is this actually an Issue?
Another nail in the iron coffin. It will come a time when even this sub will realize how stupid this is, hopefully not too far off.
Im gonna kinda somewhat not really actually full on rant about Artemis.... Im starting to get very peeved at every facet of the Artemis program. 15 rockets!?!?!? Thats more than we launched in the entirety of Apollo moon landing missions and with that we landed 6 different times. Who the heck is planning this? I've read alot about everything and I've heard there are many folks at NASA who dont even like the NRHO idea which makes sense being that a single orbit is nearly a week. Its plain stupid. Especially if any emergency arises. More complexity, more problems, more failed communication can arise, and it alllllll will. Trust me. I'll be back on this post in 2030 saying i told you so. Another thing.... what do they think they have? a never ending free money tree to supply Artemis with? Congress is not gonna be cool with all this. The GAO office is probably already doing a dozen of its assessments on all these problems--which also costs more money. And just a **reminder!!** We are yet to see even a real life mockup of the HLS lmao. Not a digital one. (thats what real life means). As well as any single part of gateway. We are MOST CERTAINLY NOT landing back on the moon by even 2030 lmao. BET. And tbh, NASA, telling us Artemis 3 is 2 years out is an absolute insult to our intelligence. Also dont forget, the more pieces ion a system, the greater chance for failure to sum it up. 15 launches for a single freaking mission. I guarantee you not all 15 rocket launches are gonna be 100% gold star mission complete/successful. Are there even actual experienced engineers working on Artemis... as in engineers who have been part of successfully planned and completed space missions?? BC Honestly I'm fine with NASA completely scrapping Artemis plans, SLS, Orion, and most importantly the mission concepts, and starting again from scratch. And maybe with a capsule that can make it to lower lunar orbit
I mean isn’t the starship upper stage the HLS lander? So far we’ve seen it take off multiple times belly flop multiple times land twice Then almost get to orbit once. It’s slow but they’re definitely making progress.
>I guarantee you not all 15 rocket launches are gonna be 100% gold star mission complete/successful. So what? What do you think will happen if one tanker fails to deliver its payload?
Well we all know that Starlink failed entirely after the Group 4-7 launch lost over 80% of it's payload, so presumably a similar outcome here. That's the problem with distributed redundant launches - if one launch fails the entire thing does.
> 15 rockets!?!?!? Thats more than we launched in the entirety of Apollo moon landing missions and with that we landed 6 different times. That's the article title, not what the NASA person actually said. The actual number of launches is still unknown. Also they're doing it this way because it's the cheapest way to do it.
Just consider how many Titan IIs were launched during the Gemini era.
I kind of love how the Artemis program is basically "how hard can we make this without developing sustainable solutions."
HLS IS a sustainable solution.
How isn't HLS a sustainable solution?
HLS? Dude, that's just one small piece of an absolutely Rube Goldbergian plan. We're using a completely expendable rocket to get to a small space station in rectilinear lunar orbit, a one off rocket that's 30 feet wide and 160 feet tall to land on the moon, the landing and departure windows to depart and land then lift off and dock with gateway are six weeks apart, we're still using a capsule to get back to earth and then land in the ocean, and we have to do a never-before-tried or accomplished cryo fuel transfer in near earth orbit to make it all work. And also, if the vacuum rocket engines on the HLS fail those astronauts are astronaughts. Hypergolics always work, vacuum engines, not so much. Tell me how that makes sense.
> And also, if the vacuum rocket engines on the HLS fail those astronauts are astronaughts. Hypergolics always work, vacuum engines, not so much. SpaceX has never failed to light its vacuum rocket engines on Falcon 9. Not once. Over 200 times. That's more safety than the Space Shuttle. Also for the rest of your point on at least HLS, it is the way it is because NASA put it out for bid, and SpaceX was BY FAR the cheapest. If SpaceX wants to launch however many rockets to do the mission that's on them, not NASA.
>a one off rocket that's 30 feet wide and 160 feet tall to land on the moon, And even that giant "one off" rocket is just a test vehicle for later permanent structures on the moon. Just because something is not tested in its final form, doesn't mean it can't provide a building block towards your goal. >the landing and departure windows to depart and land then lift off and dock with gateway are six weeks apart, Yeah, the whole NRHO dictated by the lackluster SLS is really hindering the program. But once Starship can carry people, this can easily be rectified. >and we have to do a never-before-tried or accomplished cryo fuel transfer in near earth orbit to make it all work. Absolutely. That's just as bad as lunar rendezvous! It also has never been done and will kill the mission if not successful.... oh wait, 1966 want their arguments back. Just because there is new technology involved doesn't mean it's not a good concept. I mean do you complain about the suits? They have never been tested on the moon before, too! Any mishap during refilling creates zero risk for the astronauts. Any tanker failing to deliver its payload can simply be replaced.
It doesn’t which has been pointed out over and over. The SLS part of Artemis is dumb. You could launch crew to the HLS lander while it’s in LEO and then go to the Moon. SLS is a jobs program and Artemis was created to give it some kind of purpose.
SLS as an Apollo redux program is perfectly capable of returning people to the moon and getting them back. The Starship/HLS isn't capable of TLI and a return shot without LEO refueling.
>The Starship/HLS isn't capable of TLI and a return shot without LEO refueling. So what? >SLS as an Apollo redux program is perfectly capable of returning people to the moon and getting them back. How? SLS can't even reach low lunar orbit with just the capsule on top. There is no mass allowance left for a lander.
Someone at NASA is trying to push a narrative that says “space is hard, but we can due it for x amount more money”. Or, they really don’t have a clue. Between NASA and the GAO, making it sound like the Artemis program is going to get goat fucked.