Brand it Trump, and classify it as military hardware.
There, funding and top-level support guaranteed. And when we're shut of the bastard, maybe we can repurpose all that ICE funding to something less awful.
NASA's lunar reboot is long on ambition, short on answers
NASA's Ignition presentation was heavy on space hardware, but light on details. Not least of which was how astronauts are supposed to get from Earth to its moonbase and back. The space agency outlined plans this week, which notably included "pausing" proposals for the Gateway space station, thanks in part to SpaceX and Blue …
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Wednesday 25th March 2026 15:56 GMT Flocke Kroes
Two different goals
The goal that can be sold to Trump is a flags and footprints 2 proving
AmericaTrump is great again. That does not interest me but I accept it is the route to funding. Orion is the only crew vehicle available today that can return humans from the Moon so it is a part of the next US crewed Moon landing. SLS was the backbone of Artemis because congress loved splitting billions between 50 states. Gateway was required because that was as far as SLS could send Orion. SLS's low cadence doomed Artemis to flags and footprints every two years. Isaacman has done a masterful job of sidelining SLS. Step one was to promise the same money for more missions. Step 2 was for Orion to meet HLS in LEO and have the HLS deliver Orion to Low Lunar Orbit. Step 3 is that cheaper rockets can get Orion to LEO so there is no need for SLS. At the same time the pork that was promised by Gateway goes to the same people but for operating a Moon base instead. Moving outbound crew transfer to LEO eliminates the reason for Gateway. The only way that pork remains on the table is if the Moon base actually happens so old space's skilled lobbyists will now be re-deployed supporting that instead.The goal I care about is reducing the cost of access to space - with a return journey. Orion does not do that. For a twenty year old concept it is fine but we can do better now. To reduce costs we will have to. The loiter time is a problem that might be fixable with enough money. The way to reduce cost is through scale. Satellites have been expensive because reducing the mass to the absolute bare minimum costs lots of money (or reliability). Bump up the size and problems can be solved with cheap brute force engineering. Bump up the size and the expense can be divided by 40 passengers instead of 4.
On the other hand, bump up the size and even the biggest rockets can only get a big crew vehicle to LEO. To go further would require distributed launch of propellant. Both HLS systems already require that. As that problem needs to be solved anyway we might as well apply the same solution to the crew transport problem. SpaceX already plan to make their Starship upper stage re-usable. At some distant point in the future with 100 consecutive landings people might actually consider it safe enough for astronauts - or at least safer than SLS/Orion. Blue are much more secretive and have announced long running projects that surprised space enthusiasts. I do not know what they have in mind but I am sure they have something and Jared knows about it. Perhaps they will dust off their biconic design for use in a crew vehicle.
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Thursday 26th March 2026 09:48 GMT Bebu sa Ware
Re: Exactly how will astronauts get to and from that moonbase?
1999.
I wonder what become of the SHADO moonbase? I remember they had tracked vehicles and LEM shaped hoppers for get round the Lunar surface and some sort of shuttle to get to and from the Earth-Moon vehicle. ;)
Actually thinking back I mostly recall my thinking if I were stationed on the base as an interceptor pilot I would need a decent supply of bromide… Lt Ellis in a purple wig still does it for me. :))
I vaguely recall back then that there was a serious proposals for using a (presumably rather long) linear motor to chuck stuff from the surface into (low?) Lunar orbit. I don't how stuff was to land on the surface. Perhaps an linear motor in orbit around the Moon that hurls stuff at a correponding surface linear motor acting as a generator applying regenerative braking.
You would need to be a pretty hardcore, à la Musk, lunanaut to be the ball in that game of space baseball… or just plain loony.
Only goes to show that our time doesn't hold a monopoly of bloody stupid ideas although the favourite for the Darwin for bloody stupid lethal ideas.
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Wednesday 25th March 2026 17:52 GMT Flocke Kroes
Re: Exactly how will astronauts get to and from that moonbase?
I would love some. The life support system is under specced (96 hours) but with a speed of 0.15c you could reasonably hope for a rescue from another Eagle if you stay withing the stated range (23 hours at top speed). Where can I buy the fusion engines?
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Wednesday 25th March 2026 23:47 GMT that one in the corner
Re: Exactly how will astronauts get to and from that moonbase?
Top speed* of 0.15C, or approx. 45,000 km/s, with a fuel reserve for 48 hours of thrust (from that URL; going to assume it means "thrust" when it says "flight" otherwise the 96 hour life support is a bit strange - you only get the full 96 if you touch down somewhere?).
Take G = 10 m/s^2, so 48 hours at 1G gets you approximately 173,000 m/s aka 173 km/s. So to reach 45,000 km/s in 48 hours you are getting, um, 260 G out of your four fusion engines?! OR if that fuel can get you there and back, so you use only one quarter for the acceleration phase (plus another quarter to decelerate back to 0 relative speed, the other half to make the return trip) and you are pulling 1040 G!
Hmmm, meaty soup (too squishy for salsa).
* presumably as measured relative to its initial velocity on the hurtling Moon
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Thursday 26th March 2026 10:39 GMT Bebu sa Ware
Re: I wonder if Polymarket has a bet
If the bet were on China (PRC) putting a human on the Moon and returning expeditioners alive before the US, I wouldn't take the bet — to close to a dead cert to offer odds.
If it were the PRC pulling off that stunt in the next 10 years - 20:1 just to be sporting but more like 5:1.
Even money that NASA will be the first to bury an astronaut on (or into) the Moon.
"Trump is forced to accept there's zero chance it happens during his term" — or indeed his lifetime but looking at the sod I would not be taking wagers that the second will be the longer of the two.
Given the vast resources being thrown at AI (and to a lesser extent robotics) I might have thought landing autonomous† robots on the Lunar surface to construct and operate Lunar facilities long before human occupation is contemplated might be a better long term and more sustainable proposition
Even landing a remotely controlled electric bulldozer to clear a landing area in the southern polar region isn't as daft as landing one of the proposed erect penises there on spec.
† the rtt latency is too long (~2.5s) )for remote control alone.
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