How America fell behind China in the lunar space race—and how it can catch back up

Thanks to some recent reporting, we've found a potential solution to the Artemis blues.

See full article...

 

[Malmesbury]

NASA OIG released a report on the existing suits last week.
https://oig.nasa.gov/office-of-insp...nt-of-iss-extravehicular-activity-spacesuits/

Yup. Aging suits, increasing problem maintaining them as the pyramid of suppliers ages out. Some companies have gone out of business. People have died of simple old age.

It’s demented that the suits are fundamentally 40 years old - ok upgraded and parts replaced. But still.

 

[mauricewyn]

Or even just an accelerated delivery of SLS Block 2, skipping right past Block 1B…

Speaking of something that appears to be decoupled from reality.

Artemis 3 by 2040!

 

[YetAnotherBoris]

Because a lot of what they have done makes no sense without Mars. The Starship design makes no sense without Mars. It doesn't need to be so big to launch Starlinks.

For v3 Starlink, it absolutely does. Those birds are freaking huge, and heavy. No smaller rocket can accommodate them physically, let alone launch them economically and in sufficient numbers.

The factories they are building make no sense without Mars. They are gearing up to build a Starship a day, 365 a year.

That's ridiculous hyperbole. Even with two GigaBays (once completed) plus two MegaBays (existing), they would only have 58 work cells combined to build and service both Boosters and Ships.

A v2 Ship or Booster currently takes about four months on a MegaBay work stand just to get fully stacked and outfitted with all the major hardware components. And then yet more months to get fully ready for launch.

For instance, Ship 38's combined nose cone and payload segment moved from Starfactory to MegaBay 2 in late April, and the Ship was fully stacked, cryo-proofed, outfitted with engines, and received its last flap by late August; since then it's been spending additional months getting its TPS completed, and other small details finished out.

To spit out a Ship per day, even allowing for halving of the current processing time (about 5½ months total outside of Starfactory), you'd need somewhere in the neighborhood of 80-90 Mega/GigaBay work cells fully dedicated to just Ship production alone, and operating at 100% uptime. Never mind Booster production, or any servicing of flown Ships and Boosters...

With 100% reuse of both stages, you don't need anything like that for any project in low Earth orbit. They are putting vast amounts of money and time that they wouldn't need to spend if they weren't serious about Mars.

I'll give you that they're vastly overbuilding their production capacity. However, that doesn't mean they'll be ready to put it to use toward Mars. They will be the proverbial dog that caught the car. Or in other words, the horse will be ready and champing at the bit, but the cart is missing and there's nothing to load the cart with.

Mueller spent his last 5 years at SpaceX working on Mars propellant ISRU. Musk would not have tolerated that if he didn't have a need for Mars propellant ISRU. Musk doesn't have much loyalty. He's infamous for discarding employees when they become (in his eyes) unproductive. Mueller would either have been put to work on something else, or got rid of, without Mars.

It takes more than Mueller working for 5 years, to design and prove out an entire technology tree for a full-blown Mars colony, and then build the production lines and manufacture all that equipment accordingly. If you thought the Starship production infrastructure is huge and complex...

 

[mauricewyn]

To spit out a Ship per day, even allowing for halving of the current processing time (about 5½ months total outside of Starfactory), you'd need somewhere in the neighborhood of 80-90 Mega/GigaBay work cells fully dedicated to just Ship production alone, and operating at 100% uptime. Never mind Booster production, or any servicing of flown Ships and Boosters...

So you're saying you think they could churn out a ship every few days? I guess that'll just have to do for now, what with being the world's largest and first fully reusable rocket and all.

I always find it interesting how people lose perspective about what SpaceX is actually doing because they don't hit all their aspirational goals on day 1. It isn't like they will just stop building capability and improving things.

I'll give you that they're vastly overbuilding their production capacity. However, that doesn't mean they'll be ready to put it to use toward Mars. They will be the proverbial dog that caught the car. Or in other words, the horse will be ready and champing at the bit, but the cart is missing and there's nothing to load the cart with.

We'll have to wait and see how this all turns out, but I'm not putting my money on "Spending billions to develop a capability with absolutely no plan."

 

[Star_stuff]

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." -- Carl Sagan and others

SpaceX does a lot of stuff behind the scenes that they don't talk about publicly (see, for instance, Tom Mueller's comments on what he spent his time doing at SpaceX after he resigned as Chief of Propulsion). I think they have a pretty good idea of what it would take to send people to Mars, and they are almost certainly talking to folks in government and academia about methods of accomplishing it. And I think they're aware that it's a political goal, rather than something they can simply do -- they need approval and support from the U.S. government even to try.

To send people to Mars, ISRU isn't necessary; propellant can be sent to Mars' orbit and surface. For a long-term outpost, it would be a 'very nice to have', once energy needs on Mars to support an outpost are secure. They have sent experiments to space related to propellant transfer, although nothing at-scale that I'm aware of. Still, they are planning, publicly, to perform attempts next year, so there must be prototypes in development and likely examples. Given the near-certainty of modifications to anything they have, I see no reason they would need to announce and publicize work there. Indeed, as they are likely to be working towards a working standard of their own, they would likely be doing a lot of work behind the scenes to obtain and maintain a working, differentiated product, releasing details only to potential customers under NDA.

Propellant ISRU on Mars is absolutely necessary if they plan on bringing back people from Mars, at least initially. My understanding was that they developed the methalox-based Raptor and chose it for Starship so that propellant production could be done in-situ on Mars for the return trip, rather than carry the propellant all the way to Mars' orbit/surface. If I'm not wrong, would that not be a proven prerequisite to atleast bring people back in the initial stages?

And, with all due respect, everything you wrote are your own guesses of what they might be working on, based unofficial news reports. The fact that there's practically little to no officially published information about their plans, other than snippets scattered all over the internet and a couple of books, should be worrying. It worries me, because I want them to succeed despite my scepticism about Starship and everything else they've said they'll do on Mars. I don't even need a white paper, because apparently that's too much to ask, but a general outline of the required technologies they hope to prove along the way to Mars and their current TRLs. None of that requires them to violate any NDAs or CDAs.

If Lockheed can publish fact sheets on the F-35 during its entire development and production run without raising any national security concerns, I don't see why SpaceX can't do that for Starship and related technologies. I'm aware they're apples and oranges but they're part of similar industries with significant overlap. One is arguably more sensitive than the other, and yet - you and I can read up on the former without needing to be an insider.

SpaceX is, of course, under no obligation to do any of that. But I'd appreciate and believe them more if they cared to update us space folks who genuinely are interested and give a damn about spaceflight and/or space exploration. Let alone the apathetic morons who cry 'waste of money' every time NASA breathes.

 

[Wickwick]

As a reminder for the "SpaceX is late on their Starship HLS contract" crowd, please let me remind you that Starship HLS was supposed to fly in 2024 for the Artemis III mission. And for those who aren't keeping track, we haven't seen Artemis II fly yet.

So however far behind SpaceX is on their end, NASA is even further behind on their end - on equipment that's been in development for 19 years.

 

[Wickwick]

Propellant ISRU on Mars is absolutely necessary if they plan on bringing back people from Mars, at least initially. My understanding was that they developed the methalox-based Raptor and chose it for Starship so that propellant production could be done in-situ on Mars for the return trip, rather than carry the propellant all the way to Mars' orbit/surface. If I'm not wrong, would that not be a proven prerequisite to atleast bring people back in the initial stages?

And, with all due respect, everything you wrote are your own guesses of what they might be working on, based unofficial news reports. The fact that there's practically little to no officially published information about their plans, other than snippets scattered all over the internet and a couple of books, should be worrying. It worries me, because I want them to succeed despite my scepticism about Starship and everything else they've said they'll do on Mars. I don't even need a white paper, because apparently that's too much to ask, but a general outline of the required technologies they hope to prove along the way to Mars and their current TRLs. None of that requires them to violate any NDAs or CDAs.

If Lockheed can publish fact sheets on the F-35 during its entire development and production run without raising any national security concerns, I don't see why SpaceX can't do that for Starship and related technologies. I'm aware they're apples and oranges but they're part of similar industries with significant overlap. One is arguably more sensitive than the other, and yet - you and I can read up on the former without needing to be an insider.

SpaceX is, of course, under no obligation to do any of that. But I'd appreciate and believe them more if they cared to update us space folks who genuinely are interested and give a damn about spaceflight and/or space exploration. Let alone the apathetic morons who cry 'waste of money' every time NASA breathes.

There's a big difference between the F-35 and SpaceX's Mars ambitions. The former is being paid for by US taxpayers and the latter is not. In fact, the former is being built by a publicly-traded entity and the latter is not. You might want more transparency, but you're not entitled to it. There's visibility into the big stuff mainly because it's impossible to hide the development of something like SuperHeavy and Starship. But just because you have amazing access into one part of a private company's R&D efforts does not mean you must have equal visibility into all of it.

 

[NetMage]

Propellant ISRU on Mars is absolutely necessary if they plan on bringing back people from Mars, at least initially.

No, it isn’t needed at all initially- SpaceX could just send tankers to Mars to refuel return craft instead.

And, with all due respect, everything you wrote are your own guesses of what they might be working on, based unofficial news reports.

Tom Mueller’s tweet on working on ISRU is hardly an unofficial news report - it can safely be taken as fact, and there was no hint of it before then. There are obviously large projects going on that aren’t public (NASA paying for HLS milestones are further proof).

The fact that there's practically little to no officially published information about their plans, other than snippets scattered all over the internet and a couple of books, should be worrying. It worries me,

You complain about making up guesses based on little actual information and the proceed to be skeptical in the face of the public information we actually have. There is much less evidence that they have no plans and is even less of a justifiable position.

SpaceX is, of course, under no obligation to do any of that. But I'd appreciate and believe them more if they cared to update us space folks who genuinely are interested and give a damn about spaceflight and/or space exploration.

You have no right to know and they have no obligation to inform you or the public about their private activities.

Let alone the apathetic morons who cry 'waste of money' every time NASA breathes.

They couldn’t care less about that - they are doing actual work.

 

[Star_stuff]

There's a big difference between the F-35 and SpaceX's Mars ambitions. The former is being paid for by US taxpayers and the latter is not. In fact, the former is being built by a publicly-traded entity and the latter is not. You might want more transparency, but you're not entitled to it. There's visibility into the big stuff mainly because it's impossible to hide the development of something like SuperHeavy and Starship. But just because you have amazing access into one part of a private company's R&D efforts does not mean you must have equal visibility into all of it.

I am well aware of all that. I did concede that they're not the same, and that SpaceX has no obligations towards me personally. I only ask this as interested outsider. That being said, the current state of affairs does not inspire confidence. I hope it changes for the better, and I wish them well.

 

[Oldmanalex]

First off, that’s a loaded question and largely not a globally recognised opinion.

On the IP point: sure, China has copied and borrowed. So has everyone else. The US brought over German rocket scientists after WWII (Operation Paperclip), Japan was dismissed as a copier in the 60s, South Korea in the 90s. Today, all three are leaders in their fields. Copying gets you off the blocks, but it doesn’t get you to sustained dominance.

What I see in China is a pattern: start from what’s available, iterate fast, learn from mistakes, and then scale. My partner’s cousin works in the Chinese EV industry - he’s told us stories of expensive failures and brutal learning curves, but also of how quickly they adapt. That’s not espionage, that’s engineering discipline. The starting point may have been taking apart a Tesla, but then that is how most car companies react to their competition, they buy them, pull them apart and see how they can make a better vehicle - or cheaper etc.

So yes, espionage exists (everywhere, not just in China).

But to reduce the whole Chinese industrial story to “stolen IP” is rather misleading.

At this point, they’re building, improving, and in some areas outpacing the West - because they’ve put in the work and built the depth of talent to sustain it.

I remember when the first Honda econoboxes appeared. Bad steering, bad braking and rust-o-matic. Everyone had a sigh of relief, and looked at the laundry list of problems, and said that we had a decade before they caught up. The following year, the brakes were fixed, and after two years the steering was fixed, and rust was at average or slightly better. After 5 years their engineering was superior, and they were the most reliable cheap cars on the market. That is where the true killing fields are. But, our capacity for learning from the past appears to be somewhat limited.

 

[Star_stuff]

No, it isn’t needed at all initially- SpaceX could just send tankers to Mars to refuel return craft instead.

So 'could' is doing a major part of the super heavy-lifting, I see.

Tom Mueller’s tweet on working on ISRU is hardly an unofficial news report - it can safely be taken as fact, and there was no hint of it before then.

Sure, I'll trust that for now.

You complain about making up guesses based on little actual information and the proceed to be skeptical in the face of the public information we actually have. There is much less evidence that they have no plans and is even less of a justifiable position.

I guess I should take their word everytime they change goalposts or set arbitrary milestones and then pat themselves on the back for narrowly achieving them, with little to no redundancies to fall back on if they fail?

You have no right to know and they have no obligation to inform you or the public about their private activities.

Have I not made my position on that clear enough already? Noted, nonetheless.

They couldn’t care less about that - they are doing actual work.

They should, or atleast the one(s) managing them. The loudest of those screamers are apparently now going after NASA, and SpaceX isn't going anywhere near Mars without NASA. Sure, Artemis is funded but without NASA's SMD-funded Mars programs laying essential groundwork, SpaceX can safely kiss their Mars ambitions goodbye. Let's hope they ignore and spare SpaceX and not suffocate them with those 3-letter agencies they control. I think we can agree on that.

 

[Malmesbury]

For v3 Starlink, it absolutely does. Those birds are freaking huge, and heavy. No smaller rocket can accommodate them physically, let alone launch them economically and in sufficient numbers.


That's ridiculous hyperbole. Even with two GigaBays (once completed) plus two MegaBays (existing), they would only have 58 work cells combined to build and service both Boosters and Ships.

A v2 Ship or Booster currently takes about four months on a MegaBay work stand just to get fully stacked and outfitted with all the major hardware components. And then yet more months to get fully ready for launch.

For instance, Ship 38's combined nose cone and payload segment moved from Starfactory to MegaBay 2 in late April, and the Ship was fully stacked, cryo-proofed, outfitted with engines, and received its last flap by late August; since then it's been spending additional months getting its TPS completed, and other small details finished out.

To spit out a Ship per day, even allowing for halving of the current processing time (about 5½ months total outside of Starfactory), you'd need somewhere in the neighborhood of 80-90 Mega/GigaBay work cells fully dedicated to just Ship production alone, and operating at 100% uptime. Never mind Booster production, or any servicing of flown Ships and Boosters...


I'll give you that they're vastly overbuilding their production capacity. However, that doesn't mean they'll be ready to put it to use toward Mars. They will be the proverbial dog that caught the car. Or in other words, the horse will be ready and champing at the bit, but the cart is missing and there's nothing to load the cart with.


It takes more than Mueller working for 5 years, to design and prove out an entire technology tree for a full-blown Mars colony, and then build the production lines and manufacture all that equipment accordingly. If you thought the Starship production infrastructure is huge and complex...

So you are saying that they have about 25% of the infrastructure to build a Starship stack. Each day.

If a Starship/Superheavy stack is $100 million (and a couple of different outside companies have come to that estimate) - why would they not throw one at Mars? Or more than one?

 

[YetAnotherBoris]

So you are saying that they have about 25% of the infrastructure to build a Starship stack. Each day.

If a Starship/Superheavy stack is $100 million (and a couple of different outside companies have come to that estimate) - why would they not throw one at Mars? Or more than one?

They can throw one at Mars, around 2030 perhaps. They could even throw a few dozen at Mars, maybe creating a couple new craters and/or delivering some inert steel to the Martian surface in the process.

Then what?

 

[YetAnotherBoris]

So you're saying you think they could churn out a ship every few days? I guess that'll just have to do for now, what with being the world's largest and first fully reusable rocket and all.

I think realistically they might have so far invested in enough infrastructure to support (once this infrastructure is fully built, kitted out, and commissioned) a production rate of perhaps two or three new Ships per month, tops. With long-term optimization, maybe this infrastructure could take them to 5-6 Ships per month, many years from now.

We'll have to wait and see how this all turns out, but I'm not putting my money on "Spending billions to develop a capability with absolutely no plan."

Oh, I believe there's a plan. It goes something like, "we need about two dozen Ships and a dozen Boosters immediately, and flying regularly, to deploy Starlink v3 in a hurry; we'll worry about the rest later."

 

[Malmesbury]

They can throw one at Mars, around 2030 perhaps. They could even throw a few dozen at Mars, maybe creating a couple new craters and/or delivering some inert steel to the Martian surface in the process.

Then what?

Then land one.You will find that people will pay quite a lot of money to deliver stuff to the surface of Mars. The current price per kilo is pretty extreme.

 

[Malmesbury]

I think realistically they might have so far invested in enough infrastructure to support (once this infrastructure is fully built, kitted out, and commissioned) a production rate of perhaps two or three new Ships per month, tops. With long-term optimization, maybe this infrastructure could take them to 5-6 Ships per month, many years from now.


Oh, I believe there's a plan. It goes something like, "we need about two dozen Ships and a dozen Boosters immediately, and flying regularly, to deploy Starlink v3 in a hurry; we'll worry about the rest later."

If they can build a Ship every 15 days, with the current infrastructure, then you're at the stage of "I need a couple more factories".

The plan is fairly simple. If you reduce the cost of transport for something by several orders of magnitude, the volume transported tends to go up.

Starlink is only a SpaceX project because of inertia in the space industry.

 

[YetAnotherBoris]

Then land one.You will find that people will pay quite a lot of money to deliver stuff to the surface of Mars. The current price per kilo is pretty extreme.

I'm sure there would be approximately as much commercial demand for delivering stuff to Mars, as there currently exists for delivering stuff to the Moon.

Enough to support a side business. Not nearly enough to require hundreds (up up 365! !! !!! ) of Mars-bound Ships per year.

 

[theradicalmoderate]

Suppose instead that they got $20B for BO to deliver something in-between mk 1 and mk 2, on top of a New Glenn Gonzo Edition launching fully expendable with six large strap-on SRBs, or for SpaceX to deliver a bespoke lander launching fully fueled on top of a fully expendable Starship-derived three-stage stack... Or even just an accelerated delivery of SLS Block 2, skipping right past Block 1B, to launch the heaviest possible lander that it can carry built by whomever (even Dynetics), all in one go.

All of these require the HLS to be staged from NRHO. That adds enough delta-v that any one-stage descent-ascent element has to be huge.

Even with high-specific-impulse hydrolox, the BM2 needs to be more than 60t from NRHO. The Starship HLS is of course even larger, but that's because it's a variant of a system that's supposed to carry more than 100t to LEO, with an architecture that's dependent on refueling.

60t to TLI (we'll ignore the ~150m/s needed to increase the TLI energy for a ballistic lunar transfer, and to insert into NRHO from the BLT) is well more than Block 2 will support. A New Glenn lego rocket with SRBs isn't going to happen, because it's a completely new vehicle, requiring a completely new thrust structure and a completely new launch pad--and it would still be inadequate to put 60t into TLI. Even a Starship-based Frankenrocket with no refueling can't get much more that 45t to TLI.

The size of the lander/ascender can be reduced by staging from LLO, but the amount of delta-v required to insert and leave LLO then requires much larger launchers, and something with a long stage life to do the LOI/TEI maneuvers. TANSTAAFL.

There are really only three ways to land on the Moon and return a crew safely:

1) Launch a 2-stage system with a tiny ascender, which limits crew to two and expends everything. This is pretty much how Apollo did it.

2) Launch a decent-sized 1- or 2-stage lander/ascender, then get a separate ferry system (or two separate ferries) to haul it to/from a very low orbit. This was NASA's original PoR for Artemis, but it's also the thing that Blue proposed that NASA ultimately rejected as too expensive and immature.

3) Lots and lots of refueling. Both of the HLS systems under contract are using this approach. There's a reason for that.

I do think that Blue could do an unrefueled mutant BM1, and use two unrefueled Cislunar Transporters, limited to 45t gross mass to be launchable by New Glenn with no refueling, one to haul the mutant BM1 from NRHO to LLO, and one to meet it in LLO and haul it back to NRHO. (I put this in somewhat more detail up-thread.) But I'm skeptical that this saves much if any time over just keepin' on keepin' on with a refuelable BM2, and it's not a sustainable architecture.

So unless Starship encounters problems that make it completely non-viable, I suspect we're better with what we have under contract.

The real problem with Artemis is the SLS, which is simply an abomination, and Orion, which requires HLS staging from NRHO. A Starship Frankenrocket could replace SLS with no refueling required, although I doubt SpaceX would be much interested in doing the engineering. It would also be fairly easy to get Orion launched to LEO on a New Glenn, where a fairly modest Cislunar Transporter could then ferry it, eyeballs-out, to either NRHO or LLO. (Orion has enough delta-v to do a TEI from LLO--it just doesn't have enough to do both LOI and TEI together.)

However, neither of these is as easy as staging the Starship HLS from LEO, and using F9/D2 to bring crew to and from LEO. That's an architecture that's available as soon as Option A is crew-certified, costs almost nothing in terms of additional development, and is likely less than 30% of the ops cost of an SLS/Orion trip to NRHO. There are several variants of this architecture that will work. The easiest involves separate HLS-class Starships, one to do LEO-lunar orbit-LEO propulsive, and one to do lunar orbit-lunar surface-lunar orbit.

 

[Wickwick]

All of these require the HLS to be staged from NRHO. That adds enough delta-v that any one-stage descent-ascent element has to be huge.

Even with high-specific-impulse hydrolox, the BM2 needs to be more than 60t from NRHO. The Starship HLS is of course even larger, but that's because it's a variant of a system that's supposed to carry more than 100t to LEO, with an architecture that's dependent on refueling.

60t to TLI (we'll ignore the ~150m/s needed to increase the TLI energy for a ballistic lunar transfer, and to insert into NRHO from the BLT) is well more than Block 2 will support. A New Glenn lego rocket with SRBs isn't going to happen, because it's a completely new vehicle, requiring a completely new thrust structure and a completely new launch pad--and it would still be inadequate to put 60t into TLI. Even a Starship-based Frankenrocket with no refueling can't get much more that 45t to TLI.

The size of the lander/ascender can be reduced by staging from LLO, but the amount of delta-v required to insert and leave LLO then requires much larger launchers, and something with a long stage life to do the LOI/TEI maneuvers. TANSTAAFL.

There are really only three ways to land on the Moon and return a crew safely:

1) Launch a 2-stage system with a tiny ascender, which limits crew to two and expends everything. This is pretty much how Apollo did it.

2) Launch a decent-sized 1- or 2-stage lander/ascender, then get a separate ferry system (or two separate ferries) to haul it to/from a very low orbit. This was NASA's original PoR for Artemis, but it's also the thing that Blue proposed that NASA ultimately rejected as too expensive and immature.

3) Lots and lots of refueling. Both of the HLS systems under contract are using this approach. There's a reason for that.

I do think that Blue could do an unrefueled mutant BM1, and use two unrefueled Cislunar Transporters, limited to 45t gross mass to be launchable by New Glenn with no refueling, one to haul the mutant BM1 from NRHO to LLO, and one to meet it in LLO and haul it back to NRHO. (I put this in somewhat more detail up-thread.) But I'm skeptical that this saves much if any time over just keepin' on keepin' on with a refuelable BM2, and it's not a sustainable architecture.

So unless Starship encounters problems that make it completely non-viable, I suspect we're better with what we have under contract.

The real problem with Artemis is the SLS, which is simply an abomination, and Orion, which requires HLS staging from NRHO. A Starship Frankenrocket could replace SLS with no refueling required, although I doubt SpaceX would be much interested in doing the engineering. It would also be fairly easy to get Orion launched to LEO on a New Glenn, where a fairly modest Cislunar Transporter could then ferry it, eyeballs-out, to either NRHO or LLO. (Orion has enough delta-v to do a TEI from LLO--it just doesn't have enough to do both LOI and TEI together.)

However, neither of these is as easy as staging the Starship HLS from LEO, and using F9/D2 to bring crew to and from LEO. That's an architecture that's available as soon as Option A is crew-certified, costs almost nothing in terms of additional development, and is likely less than 30% of the ops cost of an SLS/Orion trip to NRHO. There are several variants of this architecture that will work. The easiest involves separate HLS-class Starships, one to do LEO-lunar orbit-LEO propulsive, and one to do lunar orbit-lunar surface-lunar orbit.

Crazy thought. Upgrade the heat shield on D2 for lunar entry (grey Dragon original idea). Bring the D2 (sans trunk) with the Starship that delivers the crew and loiters in LLO. Then on lunar return, separate Starship and Dragon. Starship tries to land, D2 enters as a capsule. That way you don't need to crew-rate Starship's lunar return (or for landings in general) but you also don't need to save propellant to return to LEO from lunar return.

 

[YetAnotherBoris]

All of these require the HLS to be staged from NRHO. That adds enough delta-v that any one-stage descent-ascent element has to be huge.

Even with high-specific-impulse hydrolox, the BM2 needs to be more than 60t from NRHO. The Starship HLS is of course even larger, but that's because it's a variant of a system that's supposed to carry more than 100t to LEO, with an architecture that's dependent on refueling.

60t to TLI (we'll ignore the ~150m/s needed to increase the TLI energy for a ballistic lunar transfer, and to insert into NRHO from the BLT) is well more than Block 2 will support. A New Glenn lego rocket with SRBs isn't going to happen, because it's a completely new vehicle, requiring a completely new thrust structure and a completely new launch pad--and it would still be inadequate to put 60t into TLI. Even a Starship-based Frankenrocket with no refueling can't get much more that 45t to TLI.

The size of the lander/ascender can be reduced by staging from LLO, but the amount of delta-v required to insert and leave LLO then requires much larger launchers, and something with a long stage life to do the LOI/TEI maneuvers. TANSTAAFL.

There are really only three ways to land on the Moon and return a crew safely:

1) Launch a 2-stage system with a tiny ascender, which limits crew to two and expends everything. This is pretty much how Apollo did it.

2) Launch a decent-sized 1- or 2-stage lander/ascender, then get a separate ferry system (or two separate ferries) to haul it to/from a very low orbit. This was NASA's original PoR for Artemis, but it's also the thing that Blue proposed that NASA ultimately rejected as too expensive and immature.

3) Lots and lots of refueling. Both of the HLS systems under contract are using this approach. There's a reason for that.

I do think that Blue could do an unrefueled mutant BM1, and use two unrefueled Cislunar Transporters, limited to 45t gross mass to be launchable by New Glenn with no refueling, one to haul the mutant BM1 from NRHO to LLO, and one to meet it in LLO and haul it back to NRHO. (I put this in somewhat more detail up-thread.) But I'm skeptical that this saves much if any time over just keepin' on keepin' on with a refuelable BM2, and it's not a sustainable architecture.

So unless Starship encounters problems that make it completely non-viable, I suspect we're better with what we have under contract.

The real problem with Artemis is the SLS, which is simply an abomination, and Orion, which requires HLS staging from NRHO. A Starship Frankenrocket could replace SLS with no refueling required, although I doubt SpaceX would be much interested in doing the engineering. It would also be fairly easy to get Orion launched to LEO on a New Glenn, where a fairly modest Cislunar Transporter could then ferry it, eyeballs-out, to either NRHO or LLO. (Orion has enough delta-v to do a TEI from LLO--it just doesn't have enough to do both LOI and TEI together.)

However, neither of these is as easy as staging the Starship HLS from LEO, and using F9/D2 to bring crew to and from LEO. That's an architecture that's available as soon as Option A is crew-certified, costs almost nothing in terms of additional development, and is likely less than 30% of the ops cost of an SLS/Orion trip to NRHO. There are several variants of this architecture that will work. The easiest involves separate HLS-class Starships, one to do LEO-lunar orbit-LEO propulsive, and one to do lunar orbit-lunar surface-lunar orbit.

Well, I was talking about things that might have been plausibly contemplated as alternatives back in the 2021-2022 time frame - not things that should be considered now, at the end of 2025 or more realistically in 2026-2027 if a major round of cancellation and re-bidding were to take place.

But let's say one were to consider an architecture involving a 100 t single-stage lander/ascender in NRHO along with a 460 s (BE-7 or RL-10 class) I_sp pusher stage with a 20 t dry mass, to get it there from LEO (we're talking what, ~3500 m/s dV?) Such a combined stack would total less than 300 t GLOW, including extra propellant margin for boiloff and pusher stage disposal.

A v4 Starship frankenrocket (e.g. a 3-stage with only the first stage reusable) should be capable of easily lifting such a stack to LEO. The rocket and launch would still cost less than $100M: a drop in the bucket, compared to the cost of the payload as well as SLS/Orion. Throw in let's say $4B (the cost of the non-HLS Artemis 3 hardware) to cover the bespoke engineering and launch pad/tower. Then the same rocket might later launch the Orion stack too, perhaps even directly into TLI without needing the pusher stage, completely replacing the SLS.

 

[mauricewyn]

SpaceX isn't going anywhere near Mars without NASA

Wanna bet?

 

[mauricewyn]

They can throw one at Mars, around 2030 perhaps. They could even throw a few dozen at Mars, maybe creating a couple new craters and/or delivering some inert steel to the Martian surface in the process.

Then what?

They fix what went wrong and try again? It's what they do.

 

[YetAnotherBoris]

They fix what went wrong and try again? It's what they do.

In order for something to go wrong, there must first be at least a concept of a plan for something to go right...

 

[theradicalmoderate]

Crazy thought. Upgrade the heat shield on D2 for lunar entry (grey Dragon original idea). Bring the D2 (sans trunk) with the Starship that delivers the crew and loiters in LLO. Then on lunar return, separate Starship and Dragon. Starship tries to land, D2 enters as a capsule. That way you don't need to crew-rate Starship's lunar return (or for landings in general) but you also don't need to save propellant to return to LEO from lunar return.

That's been discussed as an option over on NSF (see here). It also solves a significant problem of bringing an HLS Starship back to LEO propulsively: unless the HLS returns on schedule, the RAAN (right ascension of ascending node) of the waiting D2 won't match with the HLS, and it costs a lot to rotate it, precluding a lot of important abort scenarios. If the D2 is on the nose of the returning Starship, however, it has the same orbital parameters as the HLS, no matter what.

However, with a v3-based HLS, it doesn't quite close without refueling in either lunar orbit or HEEO. That makes it considerably more complicated, which increases risk to the crew.

But the same idea works if you use two HLSes, one for LEO-LLO-LEO and one for LLO-LS-LLO. (Same thing works for NRHO.) The transit HLS can return to LEO propulsively, and the D2 then carries the crew back to Earth.

But both schemes still need mods to the D2:

1) The D2 has to be rated for eyeballs-out acceleration.
2) The docking mechanism needs to withstand the lowest acceleration the HLS can provide (about 1gee).
3) The avionics need to be hardened for deep space radiation.
4) There may be thermal issues that need to be addressed.
5) As you say, for direct EDL, the D2 needs to handle ~11km/s entry speeds.

None of these are particularly difficult, but you can't just slap the next ready D2 onto the HLS Starship's nose and do the mission. But I'll bet you can do 'em all for less that $150M.

 

[Wickwick]

That's been discussed as an option over on NSF (see here). It also solves a significant problem of bringing an HLS Starship back to LEO propulsively: unless the HLS returns on schedule, the RAAN (right ascension of ascending node) of the waiting D2 won't match with the HLS, and it costs a lot to rotate it, precluding a lot of important abort scenarios. If the D2 is on the nose of the returning Starship, however, it has the same orbital parameters as the HLS, no matter what.

However, with a v3-based HLS, it doesn't quite close without refueling in either lunar orbit or HEEO. That makes it considerably more complicated, which increases risk to the crew.

But the same idea works if you use two HLSes, one for LEO-LLO-LEO and one for LLO-LS-LLO. (Same thing works for NRHO.) The transit HLS can return to LEO propulsively, and the D2 then carries the crew back to Earth.

But both schemes still need mods to the D2:

1) The D2 has to be rated for eyeballs-out acceleration.
2) The docking mechanism needs to withstand the lowest acceleration the HLS can provide (about 1gee).
3) The avionics need to be hardened for deep space radiation.
4) There may be thermal issues that need to be addressed.
5) As you say, for direct EDL, the D2 needs to handle ~11km/s entry speeds.

None of these are particularly difficult, but you can't just slap the next ready D2 onto the HLS Starship's nose and do the mission. But I'll bet you can do 'em all for less that $150M.

Yeah, I wasn't thinking this was a solo Starship operation. I was assuming there would be an HLS that hangs out in LLO and a Starship for earth reentry that ferries from LEO to LLO then back. I don't see a lunar-lander coming back to earth.

Are we sure the D2 can't just nestle inside the Starship? No eyeballs-out and you wouldn't want to have an exterior airlock tied up with a capsule if you're going to be docking with the HLS. Perhaps the astronauts go through the airlock and it's mechanically disconnected before the burn so it doesn't bear any load. That also reduces radiation exposure. Could one separate after passing back through the van Allen belts?

 

[theradicalmoderate]

Are we sure the D2 can't just nestle inside the Starship? No eyeballs-out and you wouldn't want to have an exterior airlock tied up with a capsule if you're going to be docking with the HLS. Perhaps the astronauts go through the airlock and it's mechanically disconnected before the burn so it doesn't bear any load. That also reduces radiation exposure. Could one separate after passing back through the van Allen belts?

Almost certainly not in the current HLS Starship. The crew module consumes the ogive portion of the nose, the "garage" deck has to be dedicated to getting astronauts through airlocks and using the elevator, and you probably have to have pressurized tunnels to connect the crew module with the airlocks on the garage deck.

In addition to all that, nobody's ever done a maneuver like what would be required to ease the D2 into a payload bay.

 

[theradicalmoderate]

Well, I was talking about things that might have been plausibly contemplated as alternatives back in the 2021-2022 time frame - not things that should be considered now, at the end of 2025 or more realistically in 2026-2027 if a major round of cancellation and re-bidding were to take place.

But let's say one were to consider an architecture involving a 100 t single-stage lander/ascender in NRHO along with a 460 s (BE-7 or RL-10 class) I_sp pusher stage with a 20 t dry mass, to get it there from LEO (we're talking what, ~3500 m/s dV?) Such a combined stack would total less than 300 t GLOW, including extra propellant margin for boiloff and pusher stage disposal.

A v4 Starship frankenrocket (e.g. a 3-stage with only the first stage reusable) should be capable of easily lifting such a stack to LEO. The rocket and launch would still cost less than $100M: a drop in the bucket, compared to the cost of the payload as well as SLS/Orion. Throw in let's say $4B (the cost of the non-HLS Artemis 3 hardware) to cover the bespoke engineering and launch pad/tower. Then the same rocket might later launch the Orion stack too, perhaps even directly into TLI without needing the pusher stage, completely replacing the SLS.

I think 300t is highly unlikely, even for a frankenrocket. This is one of those "the rocket equation is not your friend" things. Also: T/W for the booster will be really, really low, causing lots of gravity losses.

 

[YetAnotherBoris]

I think 300t is highly unlikely, even for a frankenrocket. This is one of those "the rocket equation is not your friend" things. Also: T/W for the booster will be really, really low, causing lots of gravity losses.

I'm simply teeing off the v4 stack's asserted 200+ t to LEO capability, in fully reusable mode. In that mode, the Ship carries ~100 t of reserve propellant to orbit, for use in deorbit and landing burns. So, add that to the payload mass instead, along with the dry mass that would be otherwise allocated to the flaps and their actuators and batteries, TPS, payload bay, header tanks, the entire nose cone, and hull reinforcements to tolerate belly-flop reentry/descent and landing flip maneuver stresses. (OK, add back some dry mass for fairings and a payload adapter: though they could be composite and therefore quite lightweight - despite being huge; and obviously the fairings don't need to be carried all the way to LEO, either.) A two-stage frankenstarship of that kind should already easily top 300 t to LEO - at least if SpaceX's claims about v3 and v4 capabilities are to be believed.

But just to overbuild it in case the claimed 200+ t payload number for v4 is significantly exaggerated, and/or to provide high-energy orbit capabilities such as large tonnage direct to TLI, why not add a third stage for good measure.

And why not? Let's say we want a payload fraction of 3.85% (which is what SpaceX claims for Starship v3 and v4 - in fully reusable mode, no less). A 300 t payload would then imply a wet mass without payload of 7492 t. Which even tracks with Musk's latest on v4: "probably closer to 150m height and 7500 tons".

 

[SussexWolf]

I think you're discounting how difficult it is to adapt extant hardware for new, but related missions. SpaceX and Boeing were awarded their Commercial Crew funds in 2014. For SpaceX, they already had a Dragon capsule supplying the ISS so it should have been as easy to work from that for a crewed launcher as it would be to take Dragon 2 and convert it to a lander. The first crewed flight didn't happen until 2020.

At a minimum, it would be six years to adapt Dragon for lunar operations (if not more). Starship is likely closer to that finish line already. So using Starship is "to use what's working and available now."

Not really a good comparison. The original Dragon and Crew Dragon are essentially two completely different vehicles. The former was manually docked, smaller, and had no abort capability. A “Lunar Dragon” would likely entail a fairly lightly modified Crew Dragon with no heatshield, and a a heavily modified trunk designed to act as a lander first stage.

 

[rabby]

The actual problem is that the empire has lost mass manufacturing ability. US focuses on finance and research instead of manufacturing. Now China manufacturing is leading. Its research is catching up at unbelievable speed.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

The sports comparisons don’t apply to this situation. There aren’t yearly moon championships.

I’ve spent entire career in this field and have had mentors that worked Apollo. I’m also currently working. There are a few still around that share my take. They don’t see this as a race either.

It began applying when "going back to the moon" became the same sort of national trophy as it was back in the days when Kennedy had to make sure the US got there first. You are correct in that it probably shouldn't apply and would be correct in calling it a fool's move and silly to make it a sports analogy...but...
The problem, as a few have noted already, is that members of the current US administration have declared it a race.

I’m struggling to understand folks drawing comparisons of human exploration to sports. We live in a sports culture, so I get that it’s everywhere, but this is not sports.

When a person first summits a mountain, or discovers a new land, they get the claim. Everyone after that is a visitor.

Until someone makes the bet on which team is the faster to get to the summit or mount a permanent installation/new flag/in a certain time, etc, at which point it's on again. The US itself did something similar when the USSR began taking the orbital lead and Kennedy went all-in on being the first on the moon.
Sure, some of the goals are completely unrealistic - permanent moon bases and so on - but there remain plenty of unclaimed milestones you can certainly use as a geopolitical flex, if someone is inclined to make it one in space research.

As far as China vs US space capabilities the US is far ahead of China. China catching up doesn’t mean America is falling behind. It’s not zero sum.

I wasn't implying that it's zero sum. I'm assuming, based on good and solid evidence, that the current white house administration and the newly elected inept yes-men in charge of literally every science-based organization in the US, is likely to actively reduce the american capability as is currently happening with everything else.

Currently the US is under a fascist government trying to consolidate its power, and very busily wrecking everything from the old order. We only have to look at russia to see how that tends to gimp space capability.

 

[sprocket999]

Just leave the Moon alone. It's already crapped up from 'space junk' from the US and various other littering countries, and apparently nobody wants to clean it up.

I suggest developing super-robotics and going much farther out.

 

[SkyeFire]

without NASA's SMD-funded Mars programs laying essential groundwork, SpaceX can safely kiss their Mars ambitions goodbye.

What essential groundwork? There is nothing SpaceX has to have NASA support for in order to land a demonstration flags&footprints mission on Mars.

Let's hope they ignore and spare SpaceX and not suffocate them with those 3-letter agencies they control. I think we can agree on that.

Agree with what? That entire paragraph makes no sense. Is this Hollywood conspiracy paranoia of some sort?

 

[beb01]

Crazy thought. Upgrade the heat shield on D2 for lunar entry (grey Dragon original idea). Bring the D2 (sans trunk) with the Starship that delivers the crew and loiters in LLO. Then on lunar return, separate Starship and Dragon. Starship tries to land, D2 enters as a capsule. That way you don't need to crew-rate Starship's lunar return (or for landings in general) but you also don't need to save propellant to return to LEO from lunar return.

Hardly a "crazy" thought. It sounds very sensible.

 

[eyesoars]

What essential groundwork? There is nothing SpaceX has to have NASA support for in order to land a demonstration flags&footprints mission on Mars.

Agree with what? That entire paragraph makes no sense. Is this Hollywood conspiracy paranoia of some sort?

Not from NASA, but from the FAA. The U.S. being ultimately responsible for all U.S.-launched activities in space means that the FAA and/or NASA (the FAA will almost certainly delegate this responsibility to NASA) have to have approval regarding Mars' "planetary protection", or have direct dispensation from congress.

 

[SkyeFire]

Not from NASA, but from the FAA. The U.S. being ultimately responsible for all U.S.-launched activities in space means that the FAA and/or NASA (the FAA will almost certainly delegate this responsibility to NASA) have to have approval regarding Mars' "planetary protection", or have direct dispensation from congress.

FAA may not have statutory authority to deny a license on planetary protection grounds. It's authority is narrowly limited. It would certainly lead to a court case.

I'm not even sure if FAA could deny on fears of The Andromeda Strain -- at minimum, any such denial would require a stronger case than "but what if--?"

There's no real legal precedent there yet.

 

[Wickwick]

FAA may not have statutory authority to deny a license on planetary protection grounds. It's authority is narrowly limited. It would certainly lead to a court case.

I'm not even sure if FAA could deny on fears of The Andromeda Strain -- at minimum, any such denial would require a stronger case than "but what if--?"

There's no real legal precedent there yet.

The FAA (or FCC or FTC) can lean on any governmental agency, civilian or otherwise, for advise or expertise and can base their regulatory scheme entirely on said advice. That doesn't make NASA the regulating body legally, but it does in de facto.

 

[SkyeFire]

The FAA (or FCC or FTC) can lean on any governmental agency, civilian or otherwise, for advise or expertise and can base their regulatory scheme entirely on said advice. That doesn't make NASA the regulating body legally, but it does in de facto.

They can, and no doubt will, but that doesn't mean that there's anything in the statute defining FAA's authority that allows them to deny a license based on "risk of contaminating Mars."

Risks of bringing Martian samples back is a lower bar, b/c the FAA does have authority involving "risks to innocent bystanders," but it would still be a hard legal case for FAA to make, IMO. Not to mention, if NASA tried to get FAA to block SpaceX from going to Mars on grounds of back contamination, NASA would be shooting their own sample-return ambitions (well, hopes and dreams) in the foot.

If FAA denied SpaceX a license to go to Mars (and return), the lawsuit would be immediate. And I'm honestly not sure FAA could win it, even before the recent overturning of the Chevron precedent.

 

[blackhawk887]

The FAA (or FCC or FTC) can lean on any governmental agency, civilian or otherwise, for advise or expertise and can base their regulatory scheme entirely on said advice. That doesn't make NASA the regulating body legally, but it does in de facto.

NASA has almost as many people who want missions to go to Mars as SpaceX does. They aren't likely to be holding up a mission.

Anyway, this is a legal point, not a technical one. Does the OST definition of "harmful contamination" categorically preclude human missions to Mars? COSPAR seems to think so, but they have no authority unless Congress or the President say so. Congress hasn't said specifically, and the President is currently an emphatic "no":

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presiden...competition-in-the-commercial-space-industry/

In short, unless the administration, specifically the Secretary of State, says that planetary protection is an international obligation of the US which precludes HSF to Mars, neither FAA nor NASA is going to do anything to hinder a SpaceX mission, and more likely will be helping as enthusiastically as they can.

 

[eyesoars]

NASA has almost as many people who want missions to go to Mars as SpaceX does. They aren't likely to be holding up a mission.

Anyway, this is a legal point, not a technical one. Does the OST definition of "harmful contamination" categorically preclude human missions to Mars? COSPAR seems to think so, but they have no authority unless Congress or the President say so. Congress hasn't said specifically, and the President is currently an emphatic "no":

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presiden...competition-in-the-commercial-space-industry/

In short, unless the administration, specifically the Secretary of State, says that planetary protection is an international obligation of the US which precludes HSF to Mars, neither FAA nor NASA is going to do anything to hinder a SpaceX mission, and more likely will be helping as enthusiastically as they can.

I think this has it right, but I suspect other major possible outcome of such a request would be an NPRM (Notice of Public Rule-Making), requesting input on rules to avoid contamination of Mars and other non-Earth astronomical bodies. That would require time, by law at least 90 days, and probably a year or two, to bear fruit, and it might engender multiple lawsuits from lawyers looking for name recognition, "environmental" lawyers and religious cranks who want to protect Mars God's Sacred Planets from humans, scientists/exobiologists who hope to find existing life or fossils of life, companies (including SpaceX) that want to deliver payloads to Mars, etc., etc.. The third major possibility, IMO, would be congress simply passing a law putting the matter into the hands of the FAA and/or NASA, which would also result in an NPRM and follow-on process.