NASA delays crewed Moon landing until 2025, citing technical infeasibility NASA has delayed the first Artemis crewed mission to the Moon until 2025, rather than the previously planned 2024. The goal date of 2024 was originally set by the Trump administration in 2017. The failure of that timetable is not uniquely Trumpy. George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush had done similar, with Jr stating the US must …
Just saying!
Shame that over the years it's all been turned into bean counters and strangled funding for Nasa where so much science and technology has come off of the back of pushing frontiers.
Would be good to see a second moon landing in my lifetime though the first I would've been mostly going "goo goo goo" and soiling nappies.
The problem with re-doing Apollo/Saturn V (apart from the tiny fact that they don't actually know how they built the darn things) is that the program was "of its time". And by that, I don't mean technically, but socially & politically. Now, there is much less drive to go back.
I think part of the reason the drive is less is exactly because the ambition is less. When we were coming up on Apollo 8, there were plans for multiple missions, locations, etc, that were being actively circulated in the main press. Now we see a less ambitious proposal, it sparks less excitement.
And there's no point. We don't learn anything from putting people on the moon. It makes more sense to send robots, because life support systems take up valuable space that could be put to more productive use.
The reality is that putting people on the moon was nothing but a giant publicity stunt the first time around, and would be even more so now. Expect it to get delayed again and then canceled, because spending billions perpetuating T***p's dick-waving is absolutely insane.
While I agree with you on one level - we aren't ever going to be able to land anywhere else in the universe if we don't start to build our capability with our nearest neighbour.
Depends whether you think space exploration is a human or purely a scientific endeavour. Those of us brought up on Star Trek and held our collective breath as Apollo 11 touched down will never be satisfied with just exploratory rovers.
The minute China sets a schedule for landing on the Moon. Until then it will be on again off again as presidents hoping to be remembered like JFK set the goal, then congress cuts the budget for it since it doesn't have enough public support to prevent that.
> the first Artemis crewed mission to the moon until 2025
Yet a few months ago SpaceX said they would be ready to send people to the Moon "before 2024".
Even given SpaceX's rather optimstic and frequently missed projections AND combine that with NASA's dates slipping in almost real-time, there is a pretty good chance than a musky rocket will make it there before a NASA manned mission.
At which point, there will be a lot of american politicians asking what would be the point of a NASA mission?
A question that would have few answers that did not include the word (or implication) "pork".
Neither will I be.
Dragon to orbit, dock with Lunar starship.
Leave dragon in orbit of either the earth or the moon.
Starship to moon, land, take off, redock with dragon, return.
What's the big deal about throwing away perfectly good Shuttle main engines along with slightly stretched SRBs - reusable before it was feasible.
That would really be something.
Send up a dragon with crew, dock to the lunar lander which has the return capsule already loaded.
Send the first dragon off to the ISS (who cares if it takes a week or two to get there, launch to the correct orbital inclination and alignment, and just do the docking on the other side of the orbit.... Extra "lifeboat" available.
"Given the rate of progress that SpaceX has shown it can pull off, I'm not exactly certain that they won't pull off a manned lunar mission before NASA."
I must admit, it'd be quite funny for SpaceX to provide NASAs moon lander to them, fully tested by actually landing it on the Moon :-)
For lots and lots of reasons, SpaceX will never attempt a lunar landing, unless it's part of the NASA lunar landing mission program.
They may well send a Starship to orbit the moon and test out refuelling and things that could be used in a lunar mission ahead of NASA involvement, they certainly want to send a Dragon there, but they wont land ahead of the NASA mission, precisely because it would make congress ask those types of questions of NASA, and it's still vital for SpaceX to maintain a good customer/supplier working relationship with NASA.
It's all largely irrelevant anyway imo as I doubt SpaceX are nearer than 3 years away from attempting such a thing. We've landed a Starship once from 10km, it needs to land 100s if not 1000s of times from orbital velocities before you put people anywhere near riding on top of it. And theres super heavy booster to prove & the on orbit refuelling. Theres alot of work left to do.
Also, SpaceX has no particular reason to go to the Moon at all, other than if NASA wants to pay them for it. Their sights are elsewhere.
Given their philosophy of rapid iteration, a Moon mission could well provide a useful staging post to test approach, landing and surface operations. You only get a Mars window every 4 years, and then you have to wait months to find out if your vehicle has lithobraked or not.
Of course there's no aerobraking on the Moon, nor homesteading (in terms of producing Methane or Sabatier ops) but landing people, hardware and testing aspects of surface operations somewhere that's 2 days away instead of 6months away could be valuable to their development programme. And it seems like if they have the capability to get boots on the Moon, NASA are probably going to pay them to do it - win-win.
Because going to Mars is stupid. Well going there isn't stupid (we will want to check out signs of past life or possibly even present life) but staying there is. It has zero benefit over the Moon for building a base, let alone colonization. The Moon has a lot of things in its favor there:
1) it is closer to Earth so communication is easier and help/rescue, if necessary, is feasible
2) it is closer to the Sun and has no dust storms so solar panels produce much more power
3) the soil on the Moon is better for building things out of
4) it definitely has no life so we don't have to worry about contamination
5) there appear to be locations on southern pole crater rims where you can get constant (or at least near constant) sunlight
6) you can maintain constant communication with Earth without requiring local satellites
For lots and lots of reasons, SpaceX will never attempt a lunar landing, unless it's part of the NASA lunar landing mission program.
They may well send a Starship to orbit the moon and test out refuelling and things that could be used in a lunar mission ahead of NASA involvement, they certainly want to send a Dragon there, but they wont land ahead of the NASA mission, precisely because it would make congress ask those types of questions of NASA, and it's still vital for SpaceX to maintain a good customer/supplier working relationship with NASA.
I agree to a point. But it is also in SpaceX's interest to make Congress ask why NASA is being forced to buy rockets from legacy suppliers. It is in both NASA and SpaceX's interests that the likes of Senator Richard Shelby get egg on their face if the private sector beat the Senate Launch System to the Moon. It's a lesson to politicos to give NASA money for programmes but then back off and let them spend it appropriately instead of micro-managing who they have to award contracts to. The further StarShip progresses, the more obviously corrupt and wasteful the SLS pork-barrelling becomes.
NASA are certainly going to be involved in any Moon mission, if only to provide astronauts and operations experience. It's not impossible to imagine a scenario where SpaceX say "Our Landing System is ready. We want to test it, so we're going to self-fund a Grey Dragon launch out to the Moon to test it ahead of NASA's Artemis missions."
Having demonstrated the ability to do it for $200m instead of $1Bn, NASA would probably welcome that opportunity to take the SLS out behind the chemical sheds and put it down.
Although I agree with the sentiments, there's still too much politics involved in NASA funding for the chemical shed extras.
With that said, once Starship (and Moonship) get going, Congress will have less of a reason for politics to dictate funding directions where space is concerned (subject to military dictates).
"With that said, once Starship (and Moonship) get going, Congress will have less of a reason for politics to dictate funding directions where space is concerned (subject to military dictates"
By then, they'll be throwing money at Musk to bring his production facilities to their States. Except Musk is never going to go with geographically widespread production and launch facilities. On the other hand, Bezos might have reached orbit by then, so they can try for him to. Maybe others will also be in the cheap launch, recover, re-use business by then too. But it's only ever going to to be the southern States, ideally with an Eastern coastline for wet aborts. The pork is no longer going to be spread thin across many States. That probably means less Govt. funding for space and more into defence and infrastructure.
it needs to land 100s if not 1000s of times from orbital velocities before you put people anywhere near riding on top of it
Yeah - I don't think so. A dozen, maybe 20 tops. How many 100s of Dragon capsules do you think they landed before the crewed ones?
Yeah - I don't think so. A dozen, maybe 20 tops. How many 100s of Dragon capsules do you think they landed before the crewed ones?
Yes, but also... Dragon is kinda failsafe - it's re-entry is relatively passive aside from the parachutes opening. It's using well-tested capsule/heatshield principles.
StarShip is a very active, heavily managed re-entry. The belly-flop, the transition to vertical and then the landing burn. If any part of that fails then everybody dies. The complexity and level of innovation means the bar for considering StarShip human-rated is necessarily higher.
Hence the idea to use dragon for landing the meatbags.
The lunar lander (apollo) was first tested on the moon (yeah, slightly disingenuous, the ascent motor was a single use, and therefore each individual engine couldn't be tested).
There is no reason we couldn't have the starship lunar version do an automated landing without people on board (and there is the difference between the 60's and now).
The lack of an independent abort option is the challenge, but NASA have already accepted that, since there are a variety of abort options available - there are six engines on the rocket, and they aren't all needed for a lunar landing.
"We've landed a Starship once from 10km, it needs to land 100s if not 1000s of times from orbital velocities before you put people anywhere near riding on top of it"
How many times did Apollo, Soyuz, Shuttle, or Dragon land before putting people on them?
yes, a number of trips will be required but 100s of times is over egging it a bit.
I am fully in favor of increased NASA funding and manned space flight and the Lunar Gateway and even putting boots on Mars.
But another moon landing seems pointless. First, we've already done it. Second, any science could be accomplished by robots which, for the same cost, could survey multiple sites. Third, we are nowhere near a time when we could consider a permanent moon base (and the need for one is questionable).
So redirect Artemis to the Lunar Gateway project and forget boots on the moon for now.
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