SpaceX's Starship: Two down, Mons Huygens to climb SpaceX is celebrating two consecutive Starship launches without unplanned explosions, yet the business faces a daunting path forward before the spacecraft can deliver astronauts to the lunar surface. Former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine didn't mince words in September when he questioned the use of Starship to return boots …
there is still very little information on key technical challenges, such as landing a tall vehicle on potentially rough terrain.
I'm not rocket scientist, but that sounds scary as hell. Add in their crazy plan to use a winch to get astronauts to/from the surface due to the height of vehicle and I wonder why anyone signed off on it.
There was a mention of another XL craft in the storyline of an episode, but it was a long time ago & I can't remember which (though they have been reshowing these on Talking Pictures TV in the UK (and therefore on their "encore" online service) if anyone wants to research the subject. Also "Supercar" & "Space Patrol".
In the main shows, XL7 is mentioned in "Space Magnet" and "Space Immigrants", XL2 is mentioned in "Space Monster", XL9 is in "Spy in Space" and other XL craft are mentioned in "Plant man from Space". I've not reviewed all of the shows, but there were mentions.
But in what would now be called the 'expanded' universe created by TV21 comics, there were frequent mentions of the other XL craft, including some of their fates.
I got bought the collected set of Fireball XL5 comics for Christmas a few years back (my kids realise I'm retreating to my childhood, and I do actually remember the comics when they were first printed and I now marvel at how long we used to keep comics like this in the past, we kept boxes of them for rainy day entertainment back before 24 hour TV). The life of Fireball XL5 and Stingray was extended way after the shows by the comics.
I have to admit that they never really felt like they fitted in with the shows, especially when the writers of the comics tried cross-overs between the World Space Patrol, WASP and International Rescue.
At least between Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet there was a thread of continuity with Zero-X of Thunderbirds and the Martian explorers of Captain Scarlet, (although I have to acknowledge that Gordon Tracy was supposed to have joined WASP before IR was set up).
What puzzled me, even as a child, was why the XL craft needed a launch ramp at Space City, when they were quite capable (as seen many times) of landing and taking off again from other planets, even when gravity seemed close to Earth's. Was second only to the question of why these craft (not just XL5, but TB1 and 2) could hover without using their downward jets, which only fired when they went from hovering to landing. They seriously needed a scientific advisor, although the effects looked good on TV (even now, on DVD).
I have to be a pedant, though. Space Patrol was not a Gerry Anderson production.
A Non e-mouse,
Unlike with Apollo, where we were at the edge of both engineering and science, we now know a lot more about the Moon. We've got the surface mostly very well mapped - and we won't be committing astronauts to land on the strength of slightly dodgy ground radar - so we shouldn't have the issue where the lander gets aimed at a boulder-field - as happened with Apollo 11. Also, if that does go wrong, we're not going to be so tight on fuel that we've only got 30 seconds margin - forcing Armstrong to deliberately drift the spacecraft along looking for somewhere flat to put it down in a hurry - which he managed with just a few seconds before he'd have to hit the abort to orbit button and end the mission in failure, for lack of spare fuel.
The height does worry me a bit. But NASA approved it. And I'm sure those calculations are very basic and easy. With the engines and fuel at the bottom of the spacecraft it should be absolutely fine. It's not like there are high winds to worry about on the Moon. It's a bit late Bridenstine to be worrying about it now he's left the job - rather than saying this when he actually was responsible for the decision. Although I guess his digs are as much aimed at Congress as they are at SpaceX.
I'll refer you to two of the latest robot landers sent to the moon: They fell over.
And both were part of the low-budget programs to get new companies in to build cheap probes - plus both were automated and not piloted. They were also only part of larger missions, with multiple small probes on board and didn't have much of a weight budget for decent sensors. Something that's hopefully not in the plans for a manned lander.
No. Shit on Elon all you want, but SpaceX's flight control software is literally SECOND TO NONE, including nation states.
If they can hover a rocket in mid air with such precision that they are able to pluck it out of the air with metal arms, and landing successfully more than 500 times on a barge bobbing in the ocean, then landing on the lunar surface without falling over is nothing.
> lunar landing nav systems are hard
And with SpaceX only solving problems as they occur, how many runs will it take them to get it correct?
How many tries did they need to get Falcon stages to land and be reusable? On that carefully flattened concrete apron with a great big circle and cross painted on as a target! What about the big stage? Will we be hearing about a change in plan, one with chopsticks on the moon? And will the Chinese space agency help with that?
"And with SpaceX only solving problems as they occur, how many runs will it take them to get it correct?"
A very valid point indeed. The answer is twofold.
On the one hand, SpaceX solves problems by moving fast and breaking things. I'm not being sarcastic here; that is their SOP. They're not afraid of blowing things up, as long as it provides data on what's borked and how to fix it. And it does. That, plus the amount of dosh Musk is able (and apparently happy) to throw at it allows them to move forward at a spectacular rate. Don't get me wrong: I am most emphathically not a fan of the Elongated Muskrat. However, I must point out that SpaceX has achieved more in less time than any governmental space agency or any other commercial company in the field ever has. So there is no doubt in my mind that they will be able to deliver the techology.
Eventually.
Because the other side of the coin is that they're literally making it up as they go along. That's fine; it obviously works for them, but it also makes it impossible to deliver on schedule, because the schedule is just based on when they last had a RUD, how many so far, and how bad it was.
So while I'm certain they will eventually reach the point where they pull off a lunar landing, I'm sure they will eventually pull it off somehow.
Will they deliver in time for NASA's moon landing schedule, though? That, I believe, I can reliably predict: No F...'ing Way. Forget it. SpaceX states that Starship Block 3 may fly this year (read: with luck we're looking at sometime in Q1/2026) and when Block IV will start test flights nobody knows, because that all depends on how many Block III RUDs they'll have before they get it right.
I can't see Starship being certified for human flight before, oh, 2028 or '29, if that. Apart from that there's a tonne of other problems still to be solved, not the least of which is the orital fuel transfer, since nobody has any clue what the actuall the boil-off rate of liquid CH4 and LOX in space will be.
So a mid 2027 manned Lunar landing is clearly not going to happen, no matter how you look at it. As it currently stands, the entire Artemis timeline is a pipe dream.
So a mid 2027 manned Lunar landing is clearly not going to happen, no matter how you look at it.
It might, but it would be embarrassing if it was a Chinese, Indian or joint project that beats US boots to the Mun and claims the wet spots. I still can't help thinking that a VTOL for Musk's tower of power is a lot riskier than some of the alternative proposed landers. Or just building a space station that could be used to assemble a lander in orbit, but current policy means the US would have to go it alone for that, and would be rather expensive.
Getting the lander into orbit, pre-assembled, is the easy part. There are a number of launchers capable of getting a "schoolbus" sized object up there. Getting it from orbit to the moon without a Saturn V style launch is the real problem. I've not seen as much about BO's big rocket. I wonder if that could launch a command module/lander combo direct to a lunar orbit once it's working? I'm guessing not.
"However, I must point out that SpaceX has achieved more in less time than any governmental space agency or any other commercial company in the field ever has. "
Grab a copy of "Rocket Propulsion Elements" by Gary Sutton and a stack of NASA publications on rockets and you will quickly spot the garden the F9 grew up in and the vast numbers of mistakes being made with Starship. None of what SpaceX is doing is cutting edge. Not even landing a rocket or catching one on a tower. It's all been done and mostly SX is wowing people through the scale and making them believe its never been done before.
Block3 Starship/Booster isn't stacking yet. Maybe they could get something built buy the end of 2025, but it would mean keeping everybody working through major US holidays (again). It still wouldn't guarantee a launch and rushing a new product doesn't usually end well.
Orbit, fuel transfer, rapid reuse, heat shields, rough terrain/unprepared site landing, life support, crew facilities. The list of things still to do is long and they still aren't in orbit yet.
I hear this a lot, rockets have been done, propulsive landing has been done, re-entry and re-use have been done etc. All true, but only spacex is putting them together to build a useful system. Why has nobody else stolen and implemented all this prior work from the last century if it is so trivial?
Wright brothers did not invent the field of airodynamics, internal combustion, control surfaces etc but they managed to put it all together into something which could sustain controlled flight (granted, it needed rails and a pulley to get airborne).
The main reason why nobody is working like SpaceX? Money.
They have achieved some very impressive feats, not least getting people to finance all the crashes. For alternative approaches that are at least as equally innovative but which favour traditional engineering look at RocketLabs for one. But the Chinese and Indian space programmes both deserve a mention.
article: Despite the two successful suborbital lobs of a Starship prototype, SpaceX has yet to reach orbit, let alone transfer fuel.
These were never intended to go orbital for safety reasons. In the last 2 launches the 'ship' engine control was being tested as well as its ability to re-enter at excessive speed and "wrong angles". They've been stressing it and a ballistic course means it will land near the desired location even if an uncontrolled disassembly were to take place.
Musk wants to test an "en-biggened" version next, so this last version was just for testing major features.. I think it's going well. Launch footage has been pretty good, too. We just need to convince them to keep the photos and videos in "landscape" mode ONLY and NEVER EVAR AGAIN release ANYTHING in "the wrong aspect" (aka vertical, phone-shaped) EVAR AGAIN!!! [most of it seems correct, some they STILL get WRONG, NASA ALSO].
"On the one hand, SpaceX solves problems by moving fast and breaking things. I'm not being sarcastic here; that is their SOP. They're not afraid of blowing things up, as long as it provides data on what's borked and how to fix it. And it does."
While I agree with your assessment of the SpaceX method, it'll be interesting to see who "wins" in the "big rocket race" between Musk and Bezos.
"it'll be interesting to see who "wins" in the "big rocket race" between Musk and Bezos."
Blue Origin put a payload in orbit with New Glenn on the first go. Landing the first stage didn't go as planned, but I'd put money on a success there on launch #2. The big question is whether there will be enough cadence to make recovery have any ROI. SpaceX can do it with the F9 as they are spamming LEO with Starlink sats so they can put many cycles on the rocket fast enough before there's an upgraded version that makes retiring the previous block worthwhile.
"However, I must point out that SpaceX has achieved more in less time than any governmental space agency or any other commercial company in the field ever has. So there is no doubt in my mind that they will be able to deliver the techology"
A counter-factual which is difficult to explore since NASA were not given the budget to attempt it. In fact did any of the possible "competitors" have the same budget?
AFAIK NASA wanted to can the Shuttle pretty early on but politics – remember Reagan's Star Wars stuff? – meant it wasn't allowed to. It is difficult to separate the politics from the bureaucracy and the engineering at NASA – and in ESA we have a different setup that has itself suffered from both national and internal politics – but the way various US governments and Congresses intervene has to be seen to be believed. Projects will be dreamt up, okayed, partially funded, cancelled, rescoped, recycled and filled with earmarks. Obama's decision took some of the pressure off but look at the law suits there have been since then.
BTW. of course: we don't need a new manned mission to the moon.
Starhopper landed 4 times and retired. OK, not as tall and only got up to 150m but Earth gravity is 6x Lunar.
SN5 and SN6 both landed successfully. Full (block 1) height but still only 150m of flight.
SN8, 9, 10 & 11 all went up 10km or higher. Number 10 landed and waited for Tim Dodd to walk round in front of his camera and cheer before exploding while his back was turned.
(SN12-15 were scrapped without launch, not completed or not started.)
S15 landed in 2021 and survived until scrapped in 2023.
(SN16 scrapped before launch. 17-19 not completed)
Flight 1: Booster failure. Ship flight termination system proved inadequate.
Flight 2: Ship flight termination system worked.
Flight 3: Uncontrolled rotation prevented survivable re-entry.
Flight 4,5,6: "Landed" above the ocean.
Flights 7,8 & 9: Did not get as far as a landing test.
Flight 10 & 11: "Landed" above the ocean.
The only Starship I recall tipping over was SN9: the stand collapsed while in the high bay so it needed a new forward flap before launch.
Falcon: many many successul landings. A handful of landing failures in the last 5 years. One of them tipped over! - in rought seas. At present Starship HLS is not being sent to Mare Procellarum.
New Shepard: 35 launches, 33 successful launches. 33 successful booster landings. (35 successful capsule landings)
It is landing on the Earth in a nice flat area. Landing on the Moon's difficult terrain in 1/6 gravity where only simulation is possible rather than practice (unless they will be sending an unmanned one to land on the Moon first to prove it) isn't the same thing.
And that's the difficulty if everything goes right. If a couple nozzles stop operating and it has to execute some complicated spin type maneuvers to come down perfectly upright, then they're really in the unknown.
And the worst part is, if it does tip over the astronauts are dead. There will be no rescue.
It is frankly bizarre that anyone approved landing a tall rocket. What's wrong with having a detachable compact lunar module? No worries about tipping over (and if it does in that low gravity the astronauts can probably jury rig a way to tip it back upright so they can takeoff again) and no ridiculous winch system.
China has got to laughing at our foolishness, they'll probably beat us back to the Moon before we can make all this Rube Goldberg shit (hopefully) ready.
Yes, they will be sending at least one Starship to the Moon uncrewed. What is more, the plan is to return to Lunar orbit afterwards. The competition with staged landers cannot do that. They require a crew to reconfigure the vehicle for the return journey. It would be nice to have an emergency return vehicle waiting on the Moon before launch. That might actually happen if Blue get their demo mission to the Moon before Artemis III.
The first generation Starships landed on stubby little legs that look comic next to Falcon 9, New Sheppard or New Glenn. The only information we have about Starship HLS landing legs are an artist's pretty picture and the words "self levelling". The pretty pictures for Blue Moon Mark 1 have legs that barely stick out from the vehicle. For Mark 2 the legs are much more splayed out, presumably to counter the higher centre of mass. As the crew compartment is at the bottom astronauts might survive a bad landing that tips the vehicle on its side. Numbers for Blue Moon are a bit scarce. The difference between downmass payload for a one way trip and a return trip implies about 10,000kg of propellant. Divide that between four astronauts and one sixth gravity means each astronaut has to lift 416kgf at least 4m, plus the dry mass of the vehicle. I think if they cannot scrub off their horizontal velocity the will abort the landing rather than try to do that.
It is landing on the Earth in a nice flat area. Landing on the Moon's difficult terrain in 1/6 gravity where only simulation is possible rather than practice (unless they will be sending an unmanned one to land on the Moon first to prove it) isn't the same thing.
I'd hope they would have to. NASA's naturally very cautious when it comes to launching canned humans, and like you say, there do appear to be a lot of risks due to the form factor. Then it'd maybe how many test flights NASA would be comfortable with before giving it a human rating. So maybe land 3 in a row including simulating crew returns, and the ability to get crew down to the surface and back into the Starship. Which then gets interesting because if the landing site is considered the best for a future base, having a couple of Starships already there could be useful as a base starter kit, or just backup(s) for life support. Then maybe how to get a Starship from vertical to horizontal safely so it can be buried and used for habitation.
"having a couple of Starships already there could be useful as a base starter kit, "
If they test it landing AND returning to a rendezvous with a station or other vehicle in a HALO orbit, that doesn't leave any landers on the surface. They have to land, take off and then land again. Burying a Starship would mean needing to have excavation equipment and a design that would work in both orientations. In time there might be a way to use rockets as pre-fab structures, but it would mean having loads more capability in place. I'm a fan of looking into fitting out a cave/lava tube as an early habitat option. Robotics could be used to explore some of the expected caves to see how they'd work out. Some first human missions could be to install support equipment to build those caves out once a good candidate is found. They'll need power, lots of gear and materials, tools, etc. If the goal is long term utilization, a more equatorial site will be easier to get to and will mean that the return spacecraft can park in a somewhat circular obit so evacuation is more to hand than otherwise with the missions being proposed to go to the south pole.
A polar base if positioned well will have some permanent sunlight while a equatorial location has a 14 Earth day long night so power is a serious issue. Also at the poles as well as permanent sunshine there are places in permanent shade, these are thought to hold large amounts of ices, mainly water but some frozen gases like methane could be there too. Nothing like that is found nearer the equator.
It doesn't matter how relatively hard or easy it is to leave if the work you want to do up there can only be done in specific regions.
"S15 landed in 2021 and survived until scrapped in 2023."
I'd love to find out if it was in good enough condition as landed to go again. Since rapid reuse is a major goal, if there were issues found that would need a bunch of work, launching it again with a higher than comfortable chance of a BUG would be bad for PR. Conversely, if it was good enough to go again, I don't see why they wouldn't just to show off.
New Sheppard is a fantastic test bed and I expect that Blue Origin is learning tons with it. The people that are going for rides are often "influencers" and tech people with the money to burn. That's good fuel for PR campaigns. Jeff and his brother taking a flight also shows how confident they are in the quality.
Flight 1: Booster failure. Ship flight termination system proved inadequate.
Also it didn't separate, so they decided on the fly to try hot staging, something that had been done by the Russians. That meant a design change, adding the heavy staging ring to the build which made the first stage unstable -- hence why it has always been jettisoned. SpaceX are happy to change their plans based on the results they get from their test flights. Rather than spending ages tweaking a computer model they take the view of build it, launch it, see how it performs and fix the problems. That's why they can do what they do so quickly. Hardware rich. Someone up thread called it agile. Remember Musk got much of his money from Paypal.
"Unlike with Apollo, where we were at the edge of both engineering and science, we now know a lot more about the Moon. "
A massive amount of pure science was done with Apollo as well and all of that research is available to draw from. There was even a mandate to support science education which is where all of the really cool teaching materials, hand outs and lesson plans were coming from. That's something that should still be a requirement today.
Beyond the science, there were many engineering trials that tested and evaluated propellant combinations. Particularly hypergols. Lots of metallurgy, insulation materials, electronics, computers, human factors, processes....... All stuff that doesn't need to be done again unless it's all ignored as "old fashioned" and completely redone over again.
On the other hand there was a tall lander with the crew compartment at the bottom, moving the weighty part (return propellant) above it thus lacking the stability of a 1971 weeble. (It also required in orbit refuelling - but with much colder liquid hydrogen and zero boil off.)
On the third hand there was a lander that launched sideways making it short and wide. It did not require in orbit refuelling but it did need to drop the outside tanks just before landing and switch to the inner tanks using hardware that had not been designed before the proposal was submitted. (On the down side it had a negative mass margin with a crew of two.)
Bridenstein missed out the reason why NASA did not go with in orbit refuelling years ago: Senator Richard Shelby said he would slash their budget if they even mentioned the possibility of an orbital propellant depot.
> Bridenstein missed out the reason why NASA did not go with in orbit refuelling years ago: Senator Richard Shelby said he would slash their budget if they even mentioned the possibility of an orbital propellant depot.
Thanks for that; I'd missed the reporting on that, in 2019, but you prompted me to look it up.
For example: The SLS rocket may have curbed development of on-orbit refueling for a decade
Choices:
Dynetics ALPACA had a negative mass margin even with only two crew.
Boeing's lander needed an SLS for launch, adding 2 years and >$2B per mission.
Blue+tradition space contractors offered a lander at double NASA's available budget (and requires zero boil off LH2 refueling).
Starship had the most detailed plan, plenty of mass margin and fit the budget.
The others would struggle to do flags and footprints. Only one option offered going to the Moon to stay. It is obvious why Leuders was sidelined at NASA and had to look to employment elsewhere. There are two HLS contracts: Blue Origin halved their price and lobbied for extra NASA budget to fund a second HLS provider.
Apollo was a fantastic technical achievement and all involved are heroes as far as I am concerned. It proved that it is possible to go to the moon and come back. They couldn't stay more than a few days, but by jingoes they did it
1. If you want to go to the moon to do science, stay there for months at a time, learn how to live in reduced gravity and cope with extremes of temperature etc, you will need a moon base of some kind.
2. A moon base, according to various studies will have a mass of at minimum 150 tonnes (much more if you are trying out manufacturing or mining). For comparison, ISS is about 450 tonnes.
3. Landing a 150 tonne moon base Apollo-style from a single launch will require a rocket of enormous proportions, in the order of 20,000 tonnes ( 10 times the mass of Space shuttle, 7 times the mass of Saturn 5 ) and will need a rocket launch pad of correspondingly enormous scale.
Nobody is building such a monster.
The alternative is to launch many (at least in the order of dozens) smaller (approximately Saturn 5 sized) rockets and either assemble a huge moon lander in earth orbit or assemble the base on the lunar surface.
If you are launching dozens, scores or perhaps hundreds of rockets, they need to be cheap, reusable or both.
Transferring cryogenic propellants from one craft to another in zero-g is difficult new technology that needs to be developed
Storing cryogenic propellants in space without them boiling away before use is difficult new technology that needs to be developed.
Feeding the engines (turbopumps are actuated by the engines themselves, once fired) through pre-joined pipes and valves is a bit diffrent than performing a dock, connect systems, open valves, and pump fuel...
Also - muiltiple refuelling missions? Wasn't Starship so huge and powerful? All it can carry is a cup of fuel in orbit in each mission? Saturn V third stage could proel the CSM and LM to the Moon once in orbit. This should just bring there the lander. OK, larger than the LM - but how much larger? Or the plan is to make NASA buys as many SpaceX rockets as Musk needs tor its next multibillion bonus?
> A moon base, according to various studies will have a mass of at minimum 150 tonnes (much more if you are trying out manufacturing or mining). For comparison, ISS is about 450 tonnes.
The answer is right there in the question: boost the ISS on a slow trajectory to the Moon, gentle it down and just be sure its solar panels are right side up before landing. The ISS is even already equipped with places to attach the boosters and the modular design will allow reconfiguration during the glide into place (there are some bits and bobs that you might want to move, as they are sticking out of the bottom).
There may be a few minor (cough) technical details to sort out. And apparently it is getting a bit whiffy.
There may be a few minor (cough) technical details to sort out.
A few. ;) Apparently, the ISS is highly, highly optimized for low Earth orbit in terms of heat control, navigation, and communications, so NASA has shot down any suggestion to move the ISS elsewhere, like lunar orbit or Mars orbit.
The answer is right there in the question: boost the ISS on a slow trajectory to the Moon
Soft landing 450 tons onto the moon would need about 2,500m/s of delta-V. With a specific impulse of 350 (high end storable propellants or medium performance methane/oxygen), you'd need about 500 tons of propellant.
To get 950 tons of ISS and landing propellant into lunar orbit, you'd need about 200 tons of fuel for 700m/s capture maneuver.
To get 1,150 tons of ISS, landing propellant, and capture propellant to a lunar transfer trajectory from low Earth orbit, you'd need about 1,800 tons of fuel for the 3,200m/s maneuver.
So, you'd need to deliver about 2,500 tons of propellants to the ISS.
Impractical, but I'd love to try something like this in Kerbal Space Program.
https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2025/10/16/spacexs_starship_two_down_a/#:~:text=Storing%20cryogenic%20propellants%20in%20space%20without%20them%20boiling%20away%20before%20use%20is%20difficult%20new%20technology%20that%20needs%20to%20be%20developed.
I thought most telescopes and many remote-sensing satellites relied on a fixed amount of liquid helium to cool the CCD sensors, which when depleted was pretty-much end-of-life. Nevertheless, lifetimes of several years were achieved.
There seems to be a fashion of late to bash SpaceX for very odd reasons. Perhaps it's just the opposite effect of when the media couldn't get their tongues out of Musk's arse - although to be fair to El Reg they've always been more cynical and sensible than that. This also used to be true of Apple and Google, though we seem to have got to the sensible scrutiny phase with them now, whereas SpaceX seems to suffer from the fact that Musk is so personally unattractive and dick-ish that it seems to have become fashionable to take random potshots at SpaceX.
I can see Bridenstine's point, that NASA wouldn't have accepted so much program risk, if they'd had control of their budget, rather than Congress. But where's his criticism of SLS? If the article is going to criticise SpaceX for somehow being "complicated", unlike the amazingly simple Saturn V - do everything with one big rocket - well in that case why not just slap a small lander on SLS and have done with it?
Even at the time NASA weren't certain to go with the one big rocket idea, and if I remember corrrectly Von Braun wanted to go with multiple launches and orbital rendezvous. They decided they didn't fancy the risk, and so built one massive rocket. But we have re-usable rockets now. Reliable ones. Although admittedly Starship isn't yet reliable, or even finished. But then, in the 60s, NASA went with a pretty short timeframe for Saturn, and just accepted that they'd get round the tight deadlines with massive amounts of money - and by accepting higher risk.
Surely the correct thing to say would be that the timeline is a joke - which NASA accepted and pretended to believe in, because that was the only way to get the meagre budget that Congress was willing to allow them. So rather than saying no NASA Administrator would have accepted these risks willingly, perhaps the more accurate thing to say is that NASA were perfectly willing to agree with Congress' lies and wishful thinking in order to get the budget we needed to do this thing, and so of course the timeline is a massive lie - how could it be otherwise?
But the multiple launches to refuel the thing seems to be the least risky part of the mission. Multiple re-use of rockets with a fast turnaround is someothing that SpaceX have reliably maintained for years now. Imagine what could be done if the whole SLS budget had been spent on doing this, rather than building a massive rocket that costs even more than the Space Shuttle, with none of the compensation of the cool things the Shuttle could do. We could have been doing experimental refuelling in orbit for 5 years already, using smaller spacecraft - so the tech was knonw and tested - ready to be scaled up to Starship. At the same time, prooving that tech so that all the satellite manufacturers could build all their new models to be able to be refuelled in orbit as well - thus allowing them to keep the more expensive ones in orbit for longer - and creating the conditions for a new area of space industry.
> Saturn V accomplished Moon missions with a single launch
The original concepts either required a MUCH bigger rocket (Nova) or several launches. Then they settled on Lunar Orbit Rendezvous, which was great but really limited what you could do.
Also, the single launch is because of 6.5 MILLION POUNDS of rocket, only 12 thousand pounds of capsule came back. Starship is reusable, and reusability costs something like 25% of your payload, which is why nobody before SpaceX considered it worthwhile. So it's got to be an even bigger rocket than Starship, or multiple launches with refueling.
Von Braun wasn't going to do refueling flights, he just planned to launch a fuckton of rockets. That's why there was pads 39A, B, and C. C didn't get built, but there's still a kink in the crawlerway leading to it, and a "C" on the set of warning lights. I think pad B got used once for Apollo.
Originally they would have a VERY TALL rocket land tail first. Sound familiar? They realized this was iffy, so they decided to have a VERY TALL rocket land sideways! Then they realized they could have one half of the rocket stay in orbit, which was LOR with the CSM & LM.
Gene Cash,
I didn't know NASA had looked at landing a tall rocket on its side. I'm disappointed now! We could have had Thunderbird 1 instead of the LEM. And Kennedy could have disguised their launchpads by hiding them under mobile swimming pools.
[I've got that bloody music going round my head now]
See http://www.apolloproject.com/sp-4205/ch3-2.htm
Note the tall one on the right is roughly 45ft tall. The ones I remember from childhood were more penis-shaped because they had a lip with windows so the astronauts could look down.
And also according to that, they WERE considering refueling in orbit!!
I didn't know NASA had looked at landing a tall rocket on its side. I'm disappointed now! We could have had Thunderbird 1 instead of the LEM.
Or the other Eagle might have landed back in 1999, and the Moon might not have had it's own UED. Can't help thinking that would be a better design given it was available in kit form last century, so could be assembled in space, with the bulkiest element being the interchangable cargo pod. But maybe that got overlooked because it was British.
There's a fucking news flash for you.
That's what they've ALWAYS done. Why is this such a surprise?
NASA spends megabucks on ironing out EVERY SINGLE detail, then coming up with contingency plans for every possible malfunction, then they build it and still run into unforeseen issues, which is why they always have such budget overruns.
Actually, during Apollo, because they had the "in this decade" hard schedule stop, they DID do some SpaceX style "winging it"
For example, they had no idea how to design the LM descent engine because it required deep throttling, so they contracted 2 firms to do it and picked the "not worst" one. Then they reversed their decision, and picked the Space Technology Laboratories one, which still sucked and had real issues, but was able to get the mission done.
That's just one example.
NASA didn’t wing it with Apollo and Saturn V. They went through a whole lot of design concepts but then settled on one and very carefully built it (albeit by the cheapest contractor). A lot of systems engineering practices got evolved there as a result.
The only reason why they could pivot LM engines from one supplier to another was because of the care they took in their process to ensure that the requirement was well defined. This meant that the pivot was not full of cascading consequences throughout the entire vehicle design.
"The only reason why they could pivot LM engines from one supplier to another was because of the care they took in their process to ensure that the requirement was well defined."
They also didn't allow the contractor to own the IP on the engines. It should be NASA that is the design house and owns the intellectual property as it's taxpayers that are funding the missions.
It's important to have the intellectual property rights when your company is banging out consumer electronics so you can earn back your development and tooling costs, but the same needs don't obtain for something like spacecraft. How many companies are buying lunar landers and how many are there that can build them? One buying and less than one hand building. NASA should be getting a full rights buyout when a contract is awarded. Blue, Dynetics and SpaceX were all awarded dev contracts and given money to come up with lander designs where two of the three were to receive contracts for a demonstration and it all went off the rails when NASA didn't even have the budget for one, but awarded SpaceX a sole contract anyway. I can see the losers being allowed to keep their rights in case there's an application for them down the road or some other customer shows up. At the point of big money going out for a lunar landing demonstration and full contract for craft, NASA (the US taxpayer) should be deeded all rights to the technology. If the original supplier can't fulfill the contract, NASA can send out RFQ's and get bids from some other company and not be held for ransom.
LOL! It's not the first (or even the hundredth) time there's been exploding debris fields on the Moon!
All SUCCESSFUL and FAILED missions to the MOON (3D Animation)
(edit: HOLY SHIT, even I forgot just how bad it was!!!)
(edit part deux: and that's the funniest damn space video ever)
How to get live Astronauts from near the Moon back to Earth:
Dragon: Lacks endurance, long range communications and the heat shield is only tested for return from LEO (TEI is about double the energy). Similar arguments probably apply to Soyuz, Shenzou and Starliner. (Dreamchaser has some catching up to do.)
Starship: Let's see it return from orbit and get caught with chopsticks a hundred times in a row before we consider putting crew in it.
Mengzhou: Completed a pad abort test last June.
Gaganyaan: Ask again in 2027.
Orel: Ask again in 2028.
Orion: Has returned from orbit twice (2014 & 2022). This capsule has been (somewhat) ready and gathering dust for a decade waiting for a launch vehicle. It was designed to be so massive that only SLS could launch it.
There are hybrid proposals: Orion inside a Starship without crew or launch abort system or Orion on a New Glenn. Crew get to the Orion in a Dragon and transfer in LEO then use a magic broomstick to get the Orion near the Moon. Considering the cost of SLS, developing that broomstick has looked really tempting. The thing is congress is going to fund SLS unless actually detained and deported by ICE. Given that the money is going to be spent anyway, might as well hunt for a use for it.
"Orion: Has returned from orbit twice (2014 & 2022). This capsule has been (somewhat) ready and gathering dust for a decade waiting for a launch vehicle. It was designed to be so massive that only SLS could launch it."
The Ars article tells of a much more rational approach. Mostly disposable for now with increasing reuse of components up to major structural pieces at some point in the future. To try and vault into fully reusable isn't practical and may never be possible so spending billions right now to pursue it can only delay accomplishing anything at all.
Driving slower on a long trip can save fuel, but if you need to arrive at the motel by a certain time to get into a room, you burn some extra petrol to drive faster so you aren't left sleeping in the car or having to spend 4x the money to stay at the fancy hotel down the street that allows late arrivals.
I've often taken a first stab at a design that is way too expensive to manufacture for a given market. It can mean I have something that I know will work and massage the design to get the cost down and still have a product good enough to put my name on. It can also mean that while I may not have the margin I want, it might mean a really good product that won't have much of a warranty cost. A better margin for a crappier product can be a false economy if I'd have to hand out loads of warranty replacements/repairs. It might also be quicker to get to market by living with the lower margins initially.
Orion on Starship would mean yet another variation of Starship when SpaceX already has several they haven't got to yet (depot, tanker, lander). How would Starship be able to disgorge Orion and seal back up to land again? I'm not saying it would be impossible, just a big engineering challenge.
"I don't see the logic of using the SLS. It's less powerful than Musk's Starship. It's not reusable. It's far more expensive, and it takes much longer to build."
It has already flown far past the moon. Starship is still unproven. Reuse is not a factor since the proposed cadence is very low. It doesn't "take" longer to build. There's been no point in building them any faster right now and many more pieces are holding the program up such as the space suits and a lunar lander (and political whims). To make things faster would take more space, tooling, staff, etc. There's no point in doing that just to have a warehouse full of rockets that won't be used for a few years.
The SLS has a limited production lifetime unless the RS-25 engine goes back into production. Once the Shuttle era stock is used up, that's the end. Maybe at that point New Glenn will have earned a good flight record and will be able to be used or something else will be designed and produced. I don't have any faith that Starship will amount to anything beyond a Starlink sat dispenser, if that much.
I don't see the logic of using the SLS.
The SLS is built in various different states of the US, and the Senators for those states don't want SLS to be cancelled, because then lots of people in their state would be out of work, (and probably wouldn't vote for them).
It's basically a jobs program, equivalent to paying people to dig holes, and then paying them to fill those holes back in again. Crucially, the people who control the budget for SLS, benefit from that money being spent in their states, so it's unlikely to be fully cancelled any time soon.
The thing I've yet to work out is why they need to so much refuelling in Earth orbit before heading off to the Moon. The (slightly smaller) Apollo did it in one (admittedly taking less mass to the Moon and back) but if speed is the thing, why not create one that can just get there with a small old-school lander type, go plant a flag, and then come back near to earth orbit and the ISS or straight to landing. Is the need for so much fuel (and the trips) because it sounds like they want to flatpack a whole moonbase into the rocket on trip one?
Well, speed is only the thing if you want to get back to the moon before the Chinese land people there.
If you do a quick flag plant and return, the Chinese will say "Big deal, you did that in the sixties and have obviously stagnated since then. We are building a cool moon base with blackjack and hookers."
You will look even worse if you try and do a flag-plant and scoot but something goes wrong and people die.
Better to fail on a more ambitious mission than a repeat of a simpler one
These are just the propaganda and political reasons which can be grasped by the gormless public, the scientific reasons for developing moon base technology are less easily understood.
"Better to fail on a more ambitious mission than a repeat of a simpler one"
The difficulty is where to draw the line. Flags and footprints are obviously too simple. Landing at the south pole and try to harvest water might be far too ambitious. A good first mission might be robotic to scout a reasonable landing site for peoples. Maybe a few depending on what's found. Later missions can extend and expand infrastructure each time rather than trying to score a goal from your own net. Ambition can be saved for later missions. Early successes will be better in keeping interest alive. Losing a crew or two early on will turn public opinion against further missions and US politicians will just cede the win to China or flail about trying to come up with an even bigger spectacular mission with less chance of succeeding.
The number of trips varies wildly depending on what numbers you use. Starship HLS mass still has plenty of wiggle room. Propellant capacity can be increased by reducing the cavernous cargo space. Some plans call for a final top off in an elliptical orbit, which requires putting a fuelled up tanker in that orbit. The really big unknown is how much propellant will boil off between refuelling launches. Blue think they can get that figure down to zero. They need to or face consequences:
*) Build lots of boosters to throw into the sea
*) Build lots of boosters and lots of landing barges
*) Hope they can launch propellant faster than it boils off
SpaceX returning the booster to the launch site saves a few days of ocean barge transport. The enormous factory can supply a huge number of boosters. Both teams have to figure out rapid reflight. Both teams have experience of re-use. The good news is these are firm fixed price contracts to tax payers can sit back and watch them try to figure it out.
Moon to ISS is really difficult. To go from ISS to the Moon orbit requires more propellant than dry mass. Getting back with rockets requires the same mass ratio so you need to square that ratio to do ISS to Moon and back. The alternative is to use a small amount of propellant to get to Earth's atmosphere and a heat shield to scrub out most of the speed collected going down hill. After that you need rocket propellant to get from Earth's atmosphere back up to the ISS. Storing propellant in Earth orbit is bad enough. Storing it while burning through the atmosphere would be even worse. On the other hand, if you have a heat shield you can use it to slow down enough to use parachutes which do not usually boil away during your trip to the Moon and back.
Think you are getting confused between boosters and ships ?
You don't need lots of landing barges, in fact there is no plan to land at sea. You leave the tanker in orbit until a tower becomes free and you are in the right orbit. There is no reason why a tower can't do multiple catches a day. They already have 5 launch pads under construction or planned with a potential for a few more if needed. Biggest issue is if they can work out how to produce enough propellant to keep those pads busy.
You also don't need lots of boosters, remember you are reusing them. And planned production rate is a complete starship every 3 days per factory, so say 200 a year. that would mean needing 8,500 raptors a year which is were the current limitation is in the plans.
And nobody outside of SpaceX knows how many tanker launches will be needed and at what frequency. There are estimates as low at 5 and as high as 20, we don't know. Depending on the mission, it could be as low as 800 tons to 1000 tons of propellant which in theory could be 5 or 6 launches.
Not sure about reference to ISS, its not going to be around when the lunar missions are likely to happen.
"*) Hope they can launch propellant faster than it boils off"
That can also be severely impacted by an incident on land or with the depot. If weather is below minimum for a launch/recovery, that's another hours to days of boil off that will have to be made up. A launch/landing facility issue could cost days or more. Obviously, a rocket exploding or fueling system going off with a bang could scrub a current mission and all propellant already transferred would be lost to boil off. Damage to the orbital depot is a possibility. Snap off the fueling coupler in the socket and that's everything lost. A tanker and a partially filled depot will have quite a bit of mass. A stuck thruster or some other failure in the propulsion control system could cause the craft to collide leading to catastrophic damage requiring a new depot to be launched and starting all over with bringing it propellants.... after the accident investigation is complete.
"The (slightly smaller) Apollo did it in one (admittedly taking less mass to the Moon and back) but if speed is the thing, why not create one that can just get there with a small old-school lander type, go plant a flag, and then come back near to earth orbit and the ISS or straight to landing."
If Apollo included a freight truck variant that didn't anticipate any crew, it could have taken much more to the lunar surface. The lander wouldn't have needed an ascent stage, just a ramp to unload the supplies. No capsule for crew return, no life support, no escape tower, etc. If the lander was built Mechano-style, it could be taken to bits and reassembled as something else such as a rover shed or racking for solar panels. Parts could be put together as an A-frame gantry to service rovers or transfer big items.
Mass of ascent model plus life support for crew was around 7 tons. Sure some extra mass but will have been hitting volume limits before that. As for assembly on the moon, sorry but way beyond the technology at the time, especially suits. There was a real concern that if somebody fell over then they wouldn't be able to get back up. Even today the suits aren't much better, can't even remember who the contract is with now, its changed hands so many time. If anything is going to be a hold up its the suits. Best chance of assembly currently is robots.
Just to get into perspective, HLS is twice the duration and 20x the cargo of Apollo. Even with ludicrous costs of SLS, mobile launch tower, suits and other items, Artemis is expected to cost around $100bn vs est of around $250bn for Apollo. BTW, SLS is expected to cost around $25bn vs around $10bn for Starship but I don't think Starship costs included things like cost of Starbase (factories, Massey, the towers, even a air separation unit is around $250m and need 50MW of power from somewhere), raptor development and plenty of other items.
They had a decent lander proposal, which was rejected as it had some unproven/undeveloped parts (and was a bit over weight) but then you look at Starship and think something else was in play.
https://www.leidos.com/insights/dynetics-completes-critical-hardware-demonstrations-sustainable-human-landing-system
If you squint at it just right, it looks a little like an Eagle...
I did not forget Dynetics. There was something else in play: Money.
NASA didn't have enough for a single human landing system. Congress later doubled the money but required two landing systems. SpaceX was half* price with the rest of the money supplied outside NASA's budget. Blue's second bid was half* price with the rest of the money supplied outside NASA's budget. Dynetics could barely afford to bid at all and certainly did not have pockets deep enough to cut their price in half*.
(With hindsight, all three bidders would be ecstatic to complete these firm fixed price contracts contributing only half the price themselves.)
Funny how people are worried about starship is going to land, maybe go and speak to Aarti Matthews who is in charge of HLS. Master from Imperial in Aerospace engineering (yes, she is British) backed by 20 years experience including 10 at SpaceX. I am sure everyone on here has better knowledge than she does.
Stick a fork in Musk; he's done. His fiasco with DOGE showed he's just a petty tyrant who's lucky enough to have the money to hire smart people. He himself is apparently a complete and utter moron, despite the claims that he's "autistically brilliant." Pah. Far from it. "Autistically Unemotional" more like, with a penchant for attitude and bullshit.
Starship payload capacity in tonnes is waaaaaaaaayyy too optimistic. Two stages inevitably makes it less efficient, carrying a lot of excess weight to orbit. So it's quite likely to end up as a massive rocket with relatively low capacity.
The talk of 10 or more starship launches to provide fuel for a single moon landing is insane. You cut the price per launch to a fraction and then need 10 times as many launches. The maths suddenly doesn't look as great.
Seeing as its never deployed a payload we don't' know what its capability it. We do know that Starlink v3 is around 2t and they plan on launching 60 at a time. Also Gwynne mentioned that lunar capability will be 100t, I assume that would be a cargo mission that would not be ascending.
For the maths, you are mixing reusability/cost with capacity. Reusability decreases costs for sure but by how much only SpaceX knows. Its been stated by a F9 booster pays for itself after about 10 re-flights. I don't know if that includes the approx. 20% loss of maximum payload capacity. Starship is going to be fully re-usable so don't know how many re-flights its will take.
Capacity wise. you are saying that single launch to moon is more efficient than doing 11 launches. Don't know as we have nothing to compare Starship capacity against. SLS block 2 will do 45t (about the same as a Saturn 5) but that is still half of Starship. And its doesn't scale linearly. To double the payload doesn't require double the rocket, you would be looking at a rocket 8x the size of SLS which isn't feasible with current technology. So the maths looks just fine but obviously refuelling adds a lot of complexity.
Look, as far as I'm concerned, Musk can go do one, but every time I read an article about how 'SpaceX will never do X', I remember the many, many, articles from a few years back saying their plan to land the first stage of the Falcon 9, and re-use it up to ten times, was completely laughably impossible.
And now Space X are launching, and landing, more rockets in a year than practically the entire rest of the world put together, (despite having someone with the emotional control of a toddler as CEO).
I wouldn't bet against them myself...
"Despite the two successful suborbital lobs of a Starship prototype, SpaceX has yet to reach orbit, let alone transfer fuel."
This is being too harsh. They were not trying to reach orbit but they were so close to orbital velocity that they could certainly have done it if they wanted. They are testing lanch and landing so there is no point wasting time going around the Earth a few times before doing the landing.
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