Francoflier wrote:

Nomadd wrote:

Francoflier wrote:

Although I am a bit perplexed at the increasing aggressiveness NASA is displaying against asteroids. Now they're paying to go punch one. In the face. With a satellite. What has Dimorphos ever done to them?.

They're getting revenge for the dinosaurs.

Hmm... I'm not sure that's a war we want to escalate.

RJMAZ wrote:

I don't think you guys get it.

NASA Artemis is using SpaceX Starship for the moon lander. For the NASA mission Starship will be going to the moon using a SpaceX Super Heavy booster. The NASA crew are going on the NASA SLS in parallel. This means SpaceX will already have a fully capable moon system for the NASA mission. Instead of flying empty to the moon on the NASA mission Starship could have crew onboard for a SpaceX mission and beat NASA.

I think it is naive to assume that SpaceX Starship will be a critical task where it is finished just in time for the NASA launch. It is highly likely the Starship with a NASA logo will be finished well before the Artemis crewed mission to the moon. It might be the builders of the SLS rocket that will determine the NASA launch date.

SpaceX simply needs to do an extra Starship refueling for their crewed mission as it has an extra return step. For the NASA moon mission it require starship to already master in orbit refueling and crew transfer. All SoaceX needs for their own crewed mission is to use a normal Starship with heat shields for earth reentry.

SLS is essentially ready for human flight, or at least very close to being ready.
Starship is so far not much more than a flying grain silo. The amount of milestones SpaceX needs to achieve before the HLS is fully operational is dizzying.
They need to successfully launch the Starship+booster stack. They need to demonstrate Starship re-entry (the fact that it's raining TPS tiles every time they light an engine tends to indicate that this is still WIP). They need to land the booster (probably the easiest . They need to develop and demonstrate large scale in-orbit refueling. They'll need to demonstrate rapid reusability since the multiple-refueling missions will require it. They need to develop the Moon landing and takeoff procedure (will they have to test that first?). They need to make the inside of Starship habitable and man-rate the whole thing to NASA standards. Etc.

It's amazing how far SpaceX has gone from strapping a rocket engine to a water tower and fly it around an empty swamp to where they are today with that program, especially how quickly it all happened. But despite all this, Starship isn't even a quarter of the way to being what it's intended to be. It just gets exponentially harder the more they go along, which means that the rate of progress will slow down, as we've seen it has done.
Rapid reusability of a very large orbital vehicle is still an extremely lofty goal and a quantum leap from where we technologically stand today.

Additionally, SpaceX isn't interested in the Moon outside of cooperating with NASA to get there. Musk seems more interested in Mars.

Landing the booster, nor re-entry of Moonship would be required. Many different versions of Starship are planned, but ultimately you are correct. For a human Nasa launch, starship is unlikely due more than anything else to a lack of abort system. Of course, an in-orbit rendezvous with a Crew Dragon might solve that more affordably than a $4 billion SLS launch, but that becomes a political decision.

Musk's interest in Mars is well documented (as a colonization/commercial project). He sees as well the lunar contract/missions as a good stepping stone to get there.

That Nasa has elected to depend on Moonship as their best option to land/take off from the moon, means many other options are/will be on the table, though of course a dizzying pace of milestones are, as indicated, needed for Starship/Boca Chica to get there. Really, building an entirely new launch complex for an entirely new super heavy launch vehicle (largest ever) is quite involved, and the advancements have continued toward that but they can't really go much further without permission to...launch. A lack of 'hops' or static fires etc. doesn't indicate a lack of activity/steps imho;

https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starsh ... g-touches/

For me, Starship is best used as that holy grail, a fully reuseable heavy lift launch vehicle, as stated there are major issues with a lack of an abort option so in terms of carrying people from LEO to the Moon will require, if not R/V with an Orion in Lunar orbit then R/V in LEO from a vehicle such as most obviously Crew Dragon.
But this won't get them home, for that you need Orion. You could I guess modify Crew Dragon for deep space but I question that and NASA surely will, it's not designed for it, nor for re-entry speeds back from the Moon.
Orion, for all it's costs, is.

The chief virtue of Lunar Starship is it's potential for be a kind of Lunar Base in one package, with plenty of space for stores, shielding etc.
Leave one on the surface for that and a second with the ability to return with crew to Lunar orbit, after landing crew and more supplies.
The crew will still require a means to get back and that is where Orion comes in.

This of course is Lunar Starship, clearly Musk intends his Mars Starships to return to Earth, at least some of them!
But that version is some way from where we are now, even a huge admirer of Space X like me does not see that version any time soon, even then an initial Mars manned mission would still as far as NASA is concerned, need an Orion docked to a Mars Starship once it has completed it's mission and lifted off to Mars orbit.

Always worth remembering, without NASA's support and funding we would not be seeing Crew Dragon most likely, the fact that Boeing also got the same support speaks volumes about them, not NASA.
That program would never have got through Congress if a very major US aerospace player was excluded.
It struggled enough anyway.

RJMAZ wrote:

texl1649 wrote:

Landing the booster, nor re-entry of Moonship would be required. Many different versions of Starship are planned, but ultimately you are correct. For a human Nasa launch, starship is unlikely due more than anything else to a lack of abort system. Of course, an in-orbit rendezvous with a Crew Dragon might solve that more affordably than a $4 billion SLS launch, but that becomes a political decision.

That is what I'm thinking. SpaceX sends up Crew Dragon to dock with Lunar Starship. Lunar Starship travels from earth orbit to the moon and back. Crew Dragon then picks them up from earth orbit when they return.

Lunar Starship simply needs extra orbit refuelings before leaving earth if it plans to do a return trip.

SpaceX will need to test the landing capability of Moonship before the NASA crewed flight. So they could place crew on one of these flights. I expect by the time NASA lands on the moon there will be atleast 3 Lunar Starships already on the surface as part of test landing. They can form a future moon base.

Yes this is the thinking I would theorize as to an alternative. Part of the issue, though, is the massive delta v needed for starship to go to/from the moon (it’s actually higher than mars I believe). Re-entry can be solved from LEO via crew dragon etc., but we are still left with a massive amount of fuel needed for the trip each way. If in fact starship tankers can be pre-positioned/demonstrated to work in lunar orbits that work, ok, but the challenge should not be overlooked from an engineering perspective. Frankly, it remains an inefficient solution, so a ‘mini’ starship (that separates from a. Starship basically) would make a lot more sense, to decrease the mass getting back to earth. But, that gets into a whole debate about the philosophy of SpaceX as a whole.

texl1649 wrote:

Yes this is the thinking I would theorize as to an alternative. Part of the issue, though, is the massive delta v needed for starship to go to/from the moon (it’s actually higher than mars I believe). Re-entry can be solved from LEO via crew dragon etc., but we are still left with a massive amount of fuel needed for the trip each way. If in fact starship tankers can be pre-positioned/demonstrated to work in lunar orbits that work, ok, but the challenge should not be overlooked from an engineering perspective. Frankly, it remains an inefficient solution, so a ‘mini’ starship (that separates from a. Starship basically) would make a lot more sense, to decrease the mass getting back to earth. But, that gets into a whole debate about the philosophy of SpaceX as a whole.

I believe you are correct regarding the moon vs mars Delta V question. Problem with the moon is everything requires fuel of some sort. Mars at least has some atmosphere to slow you down.

I like Starship, but I find myself asking the same question the Grumman engineers did with the LM. Do you really need to take all that weight down to the surface? I get that the point is to establish a base so it can’t just be a very basic lander like the LM, but it seems like a lot of extra weight (FUEL!) that you need to bring with you…just to bring it back.

I always liked the idea of an lunar orbiting craft. (a bit like NASAs gateway idea) Launch from earth, TLI, meet the lunar orbit craft/station, and then take a different reuseable lander to the surface. Park a fully fueled starship in orbit to use as an orbiting moon base, and then refuel the lander from that.

The Starship refueling seems like a massive part of the plan that isn’t really addressed much, even though it’s one of the few parts of the overall vision that has never been done before in any capacity

But as always I suppose there are much smarter and more informed minds than mine working on this.

texl1649 wrote:

Frankly, it remains an inefficient solution, so a ‘mini’ starship (that separates from a. Starship basically) would make a lot more sense, to decrease the mass getting back to earth. But, that gets into a whole debate about the philosophy of SpaceX as a whole.

Efficiency doesn't matter. Cost does. If Starships are handling a mission for a few million dollars, developing an entirely new craft to make it more efficient doesn't make sense. If they get it going the way they hope, refueling missions will cost pocket change.

FGITD wrote:

The Starship refueling seems like a massive part of the plan that isn’t really addressed much, even though it’s one of the few parts of the overall vision that has never been done before in any capacity

To be fair though, at roughly the same point in the Apollo timeline, rendezvouz and docking had never been demonstrated. I suspect most issues with orbital refuelling are not technical, but political. Having said that, clearly it is still a huge engineering challenge!

meecrob wrote:

FGITD wrote:

The Starship refueling seems like a massive part of the plan that isn’t really addressed much, even though it’s one of the few parts of the overall vision that has never been done before in any capacity

To be fair though, at roughly the same point in the Apollo timeline, rendezvouz and docking had never been demonstrated. I suspect most issues with orbital refuelling are not technical, but political. Having said that, clearly it is still a huge engineering challenge!

That’s a very good point, we need a starship Gemini-esque stage!

The more I thought about it, the less complicated it seemed. Fully fueled starship launches, rendezvous with moon starship, use some kind of Canadarm contraption to connect a hose, and then pumps to move the fuel. Presumably they’ll need some sort of inert gas to fill the tank as it empties.

I’m sure it’s a bit more involved than that. But seems like once they figure it out, it should be a nice little day trip for the tanker starship.

I'm wondering though...there is a big need to get mass *to* the moon but is there such a need to get it back? I think the trips will be asymmetrical.

The concept of having dedicated craft optimized for certain parts of the mission is not new, e.g.

1. Something to get stuff to an Earth orbital oasis (e.g. station), reload, and back to the Earth's surface
2. Something to get stuff to an Lunar orbital oasis (e.g. station), reload, and back to the Moon's surface
3. Something to get stuff from one Oasis to another

The nice thing about Starship is that in theory it can bypass having to stop in Lunar orbit and go straight the Moon's surface, however as I also mentioned I think the number of Starships needing to go there will be much higher than the number that needs to return, and the ones that do return don't even need to get to Earth at all - they just need to get to Lunar orbit, or at most back to the oasis in Earth orbit and then round trip back to the Moon.

I'm wondering though if the idea of an oasis may be thrown out the window. With an oasis you need to time your launches to a single destination. How long can a tanker stay in orbit? To Nomadd's point, if it becomes cheap enough to launch bulk fuel to orbit, maybe the plan is just to throw them up in a constellation where there are numerous floating gas tanks up there at any time in formation, at various points. Think of Starlink - instead of a few big, expensive satellites they are using hundreds of cheap ones.

Maybe it's we who are thinking too much inside the box.

RJMAZ wrote:

The last thing you want to do is leave expensive rocket engines on the moon just to save weight when coming back to earth. The cost of the rocket engines would be far greater than any efficiencies gained.

They already have the SL engines down to around a million each and hope to get them to a quarter million. Not sure about the vacuum models. They aren't $100 million RS-25s.

Yup, because say they get to a quarter million for 6 engines. that $1.5M that you are leaving there, but it may be a heck of a lot cheaper from a payload perspective than taking less payload to the lunar surface to just leave it there.

How many people would make a meaningful lunar colony? I'm not talking about 6-10 like the ISS, I'm talking to actually do something meaningful. Maybe 50 to 100 at a time (Antarctica for comparison has 1000 through the winter, more in summer). These people will need workshops, food storage, waste processing, habitats, etc. How long would it take to dig or build on the lunar surface enough space for all this for a colony of 100 people, or maybe 200, even if you used inflatable structures?

This is why we are saying from a cost perspective it may be cheaper to just leave the hardware there then try to have it fly all the way back to Earth. Else you'll have to build storage to put all that stuff, when it's already there "for free" in the form of a Moonship hull. And, decades from now when you don't need the Moonship hulls anymore for storage/work space, just cannibalize the hulls for material.

The vast majority of mass launched is one way. Very little (people, maybe some moon rocks) need the return trip.

Reports: SpaceX faces possible bankruptcy if Raptor production does not improve

https://spaceexplored.com/2021/11/29/sp ... or-crisis/

https://spacenews.com/nasa-to-award-spa ... w-flights/

3 more crewed launches awarded to SpaceX, bringing the new total up to 9. I’ll be interested to see where it goes after these ones are all used up

I suspect NASA will keep awarding crewed flights to SpaceX until such time as Starliner is finally operational... if ever.

The Falcon 9 / Dragon combo is proving quite reliable and trouble-free (touching wood), so NASA is in no rush for Boeing to get their sh#t together.
This is the beauty of the dual-contractor policy NASA chose years ago, which is now paying off nicely.

zanl188 wrote:

Reports: SpaceX faces possible bankruptcy if Raptor production does not improve

FGITD wrote:

3 more crewed launches awarded to SpaceX, bringing the new total up to 9. I’ll be interested to see where it goes after these ones are all used up

Boeing has been good at helping their competitor's solvency these days.

Somewhat off topic, but I have wondered why space telescopes are not located on the moon. Given no atmosphere very light weight shading would protect them from the sun. As they wear out, they would become a great junkyard for the next generation of telescopes and even parts for the ultimate moon station. And if they breakdown it would become trivial to send the mechanic who could fix that multi-hundred million $$$, even billion$ machine.

frmrCapCadet wrote:

Somewhat off topic, but I have wondered why space telescopes are not located on the moon. Given no atmosphere very light weight shading would protect them from the sun. As they wear out, they would become a great junkyard for the next generation of telescopes and even parts for the ultimate moon station. And if they breakdown it would become trivial to send the mechanic who could fix that multi-hundred million $$$, even billion$ machine.

You seriously believe it's trivial to send mechanics to the Moon to fix stuff? Even provided you get stuff successfully placed on the Moon first? One pre-landing firing exercise gone not the plan, and your telescope is in a crater, or kicks up a bunch of dust -- contaminating everything...

You do realize that the Hubble, and the one to be launched in a few days have no chance of being repaired or updated. So yes, a multibillion dollar telescope, in comparison will be trivial to repair. Dust, the telescope would be far enough from the rocket, and have dust as well as sun protection. I don't know how many miles away in would need to be, but there is no atmosphere to carry dust a great distance, or to keep it in the air all that long.

frmrCapCadet wrote:

Somewhat off topic, but I have wondered why space telescopes are not located on the moon. Given no atmosphere very light weight shading would protect them from the sun. As they wear out, they would become a great junkyard for the next generation of telescopes and even parts for the ultimate moon station. And if they breakdown it would become trivial to send the mechanic who could fix that multi-hundred million $$$, even billion$ machine.

You know, the sun does move around in the lunar sky. Shading in space would be much simpler.
And thinking that a lunar repair mission would be "trivial" is so ridiculous it's hard to politely respond to.

James Webb will not and cannot ever be reached for repairs. Hubble for a variety of reasons cannot be repaired. People can and have, you might remember, gone to the moon. Musk intends to make it relatively easy.

SpaceX is converting B1052, a former Falcon Heavy side booster, to a Falcon 9 booster which should start its solo career soon.
B1052 was used on the Arabsat-6 and STP-2 Falcon Heavy missions back in 2019, along with B1053 which will likely also be converted.

These should help replace earlier F9 boosters (namely B1049 and B1051 - 10 flights each) which Musk said were harder to refurbish.

https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-falcon ... onversion/

frmrCapCadet wrote:

James Webb will not and cannot ever be reached for repairs. Hubble for a variety of reasons cannot be repaired. People can and have, you might remember, gone to the moon. Musk intends to make it relatively easy.

Interesting ideas. You do mean that
a) placing a telescope on the Moon
b) operating it there
c) visiting it from time to time
without ever kicking up moondust, to contaminate it, is
a) feasible
b) cheaper than placing a telescope in a high orbit, and visiting it from time to time
c) cheaper than placing a telescope in a Lagrangian point and visiting it from time to time

Reference to Apollo doesn't fly. Apollo was expensive, and exquisitely timed, with time between module separation and modules redocking basically being on a stop-watch. If you were late with launch and rendezvous, you wouldn't have fuel to get out of there.

You'd need to augment energy of the entire enterprise significantly, to have time and payload to get to your telescope for a useful purpose (crew, tools, spares), rather than just tick the box "visited".
And it has to be cheap to justify the effort.
With those energies involved, I fail to see a problem of getting to a L point, or very high orbit.

I'll be glad to be educated, why you prefer to go into a gravity well and risk contaminating your telescope, vs. keeping it out there, where it's clean and there's no gravity.

Appears the FAA commercial astronaut wings program is being nixed at the end of the year, with current crews being grandfathered in.

I can understand why, and I think it’s best to look at it as a sign of progress. Going into space has become “common” enough that it’s no longer the same special distinction that it was. Especially since the pin/wings originated from actual test pilots pushing the envelope riding ICBMs…I’d rather keep that distinction separate from morning talk show hosts who go on a PR ride for 10 minutes

Phosphorus wrote:

frmrCapCadet wrote:

James Webb will not and cannot ever be reached for repairs. Hubble for a variety of reasons cannot be repaired. People can and have, you might remember, gone to the moon. Musk intends to make it relatively easy.

Interesting ideas. You do mean that
a) placing a telescope on the Moon
b) operating it there
c) visiting it from time to time
without ever kicking up moondust, to contaminate it, is
a) feasible
b) cheaper than placing a telescope in a high orbit, and visiting it from time to time
c) cheaper than placing a telescope in a Lagrangian point and visiting it from time to time

Reference to Apollo doesn't fly. Apollo was expensive, and exquisitely timed, with time between module separation and modules redocking basically being on a stop-watch. If you were late with launch and rendezvous, you wouldn't have fuel to get out of there.

You'd need to augment energy of the entire enterprise significantly, to have time and payload to get to your telescope for a useful purpose (crew, tools, spares), rather than just tick the box "visited".
And it has to be cheap to justify the effort.
With those energies involved, I fail to see a problem of getting to a L point, or very high orbit.

I'll be glad to be educated, why you prefer to go into a gravity well and risk contaminating your telescope, vs. keeping it out there, where it's clean and there's no gravity.

Not to forget that keeping a telescoped cooled and/or at a steady temperature is much harder on the moon that it is in open space.

But the gravity well seals the deal. In terms of energy expenditure serving a telescope in low Mars orbit, or on Deimos, is the same as going to the moon surface.

You also need to build the telescope heavier, because gravity....

best regards
Thomas

Falcon 9 goes for 11th reflight.

https://youtu.be/q4Ed3EBx90s

ssteve wrote:

zanl188 wrote:

Reports: SpaceX faces possible bankruptcy if Raptor production does not improve

FGITD wrote:

3 more crewed launches awarded to SpaceX, bringing the new total up to 9. I’ll be interested to see where it goes after these ones are all used up

Boeing has been good at helping their competitor's solvency these days.

ZING!!!

It wouldn't be as funny if it wasn't so true.

LyleLanley wrote:

ssteve wrote:

zanl188 wrote:

Reports: SpaceX faces possible bankruptcy if Raptor production does not improve

FGITD wrote:

3 more crewed launches awarded to SpaceX, bringing the new total up to 9. I’ll be interested to see where it goes after these ones are all used up

Boeing has been good at helping their competitor's solvency these days.

ZING!!!

It wouldn't be as funny if it wasn't so true.

Won’t someone Please think of all the stressed and overworked Boeing execs?! Imagine getting all that money and not producing. That takes a toll on anyone!

SpaceX meanwhile launched and landed again last night. And rolled another Falcon 9 out to the pad this morning for launch on Tuesday. They’re getting pretty good at this space business

Three launches in less than a week, 100th successful booster landing, quite a year when you include the crewed flights too.
And many in the media still lump Space X in with Blue Origin and even Virgin.

https://www.spacex.com/launches/

There was a little hiccup with the recovery of B1069, a rookie booster which lobbed a cargo Dragon to the ISS last week.
It aced the landing but apparently things got a bit rocky out at sea and it almost got thrown overboard...
It was eventually secured and recovered but with damage to its legs and engines.

https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-falcon ... -sea-2021/
https://spaceexplored.com/2021/12/29/sp ... -recovery/

Please continue in the 2022 edition.

>>>> viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1468685