NEWS: The first civilian mission to the Moon is planned to take place in 2023 on SpaceX's Starship rocket, and now the crew who is going has been announced: pic.twitter.com/neOaZ3ikB3
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) December 8, 2022
Let’s just do it and be legends!
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) December 8, 2022
As I understand it, the proposed voyage is a (fully automated!) week-long trip to orbit the moon and back. All the participants are volunteers, and presumably their loved ones have them heavily insured.
More power to them, even if it sounds more like a 13-episode anime or a single-season reality tv show than an actual space expedition… after all, ‘spam in a can‘ has an honorable position in space-flight history…
Matt McIrvin
While SpaceX has a decent track record, I am super skeptical that this is going to happen. The Starship program always had the biggest “weird Elon Musk hobbyhorse” whiff to it of everything they do. It’s also why I wonder if they can really pull off their proposed Artemis program lander.
Alison Rose
I cannot comprehend wanting to do this. But then, my picture could serve as the illustrative example for “hermit” in the dictionary.
Edmund Dantes
One of the dearMoon people is the EverydayAstronaut on YouTube. He does a ton of great work explaining rockets, engines, etc. I hope he survives. He’s a huge space nerd and it would suck for him to die doing this.
pluky
As a (before retirement) Life Actuary I am quite comfortable stating, if anything is an uninsurable risk, an orbital flight of the moon is uninsurable.
Butch
That just seems, like, a really questionable thing to do.
OzarkHillbilly
I think it would suck more if he died crossing the street or choking on a piece of meat. At least if he died going to the moon, it would be for something he believed in.
Matt McIrvin
@Alison Rose: I can totally comprehend wanting to do it, but it would also be way outside of what I consider a reasonable risk/benefit ratio at this stage in my life.
dmsilev
I’m very skeptical that this will be a “next year” thing. SpaceX’s “Starship” rocket has barely flown at all; they’ve done a bunch of tests on the second stage portion of it, but haven’t launched the first stage even once. Not only that, my understanding is that the second stage (the part that has the passengers) needs to be refueled after reaching low-Earth orbit if you want to send it to the Moon and back, and well orbital refueling is another technology that nobody has quite figured out yet.
Edit: Well, SpaceX’s PR blurbs don’t mention any need for in-orbit refueling, so maybe there’s enough fuel to do it in one go. Still, rocket that hasn’t even been tested yet…
CaseyL
I would totally do this: not only be first in line, but willing to elbow people out of my way to be first in line.
I know space is risky, but it would be worth betting my life to be in space. And at least this is a fairly straightforward mission, and you’re more likely than not to come back alive, unlike the one to Mars. (Well, I guess that one is also fairly straightforward, in that you know you’re going to die.)
ETA: I was thinking a crewed mission to Saturn or Jupiter would also be worth dying for, and then I realized I’d be stuck in a tin can with other people for 7 (?) years each way, and that made it a No Go.
kalakal
@Matt McIrvin: That’s pretty much my take. I certainly have my doubts on the time scale, I have serious doubts as to SpaceX’s ability to have viable manned Lunar return system in that time
On the other hand…
SPAAAAACE!!!!
Oh I would love it.
Kent
My first thought at looking at that photo is that this is some conservative parody of “woke” millennial astronauts. But evidently not.
hells littlest angel
So this spaceship is self-driving? Let’s hope that no solar flares or shooting stars cause it suddenly accelerate and crash into the moon.
trollhattan
@Kent:
Crew leader looks a little like Gilligan. “Funny hair” seems to have been one of the selection criteria.
hells littlest angel
@Kent: The crew looks not only like the cast of a crappy TV show, but a crappy TV show from the 1990s.
Cameron
Hopefully this thing won’t incorporate any of that self-igniting Tesla technology. Because that would really suck.
Ken
How does that game go? Oh, yes: Take the first line of any story, and add “And then the murders began.”
Citizen Alan
It looks like Big Brother or Survivor … in Spaaace!!
Sister Golden Bear
@CaseyL: Reminds me of the meme that NASA was supposedly considered an all-women crew to Mars to avoid astronauts having sex. To which all the lesbians replied: who’s gonna tell them.
Ken
@dmsilev: Are you sure the blurb includes the magic words “and return”, like JFK’s speech? As I recall, Werner Von Braun* said it would be easier without that part, and I can totally see Musk being a Von Braun fanboy.
* Does everyone else think “Nazi, Schmazi” when they hear his name?
Matt McIrvin
@CaseyL: Anything that goes further than low Earth orbit is way less straightforward even as space missions go: you don’t have radiation shielding from the magnetosphere, and the delta-V is significantly bigger both going and coming home (square root of 2, more or less), which creates extra problems for fuel, staging and reentry systems.
And Starship is a BIG SHIP, way bigger than an Apollo or Orion capsule. I can’t see how they make it work without some kind of on-orbit refueling.
JoyceH
@Sister Golden Bear:
Hey, if nobody gets pregnant (which is obviously the impetus behind ‘no sex in space’), then nothing happened, right?
I saw some articles a while back about the concept of colonizing Mars. The notion was that the first batch of colonists and maybe all of them would be going as a one-way trip. Idea was you go to Mars and there you are for the rest of your life. (And when you think about it, that’s pretty much how Europeans came to America.) For a while, I was genuinely thinking, hey. Why not? Emigrate to Mars! Could be the colony’s Old Wise Woman. But then it hit me – no dogs on Mars. So now I’m thinking maybe I’ll be in the second or third wave, when they have more amenities and room for pets.
Spanky
@Ken:
scav
Hard not to disappointed to see space turned *even more) into a ego-tchotske for the unimaginative.
dmsilev
@Ken: The mission summary does including landing back on Earth, so yes they thought of that.
I don’t see any dates on that page, so maybe whoever wrote it is more realistic or at least more cautious than Elon Musk.
frosty
@Ken: I think “I just shoot them up, don’t care where they come down. “That’s not my department” says Werner von Braun.”
(let’s see if I’m first with this!)
ETA Dammit Spanky!! //
Ken
@Matt McIrvin:
CAPTAIN: “OK, we’re in LEO, opening the sealed mission instructions. Hmm…”
PILOT: “What?”
CAPTAIN: “Well, here’s your key, and here’s mine. We’re to have everyone strap in, then turn our keys simultaneously in these locks, and push the big red button labelled ‘Orion boost’.”
OzarkHillbilly
@JoyceH: What happens in space, stays in space.
trollhattan
@Matt McIrvin: Is Starship the stainless steel Flash Gordon-looking thing? Confess I’m not clear on the why? and for what? aspects, but it’s certainly unique.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I wouldn’t let Elon Musk drive me to the grocery store
SiubhanDuinne
@scav:
Oh, this is good. This is very good. I’m swiping it.
cain
@JoyceH: will subjugation of the sudden discovery of life there also be part of the plan? Asking on behalf of native peoples everywhere 😅
SpaceUnit
I keep looking at the pictures of the “crew” and thinking this is gonna be a shit-show for the ages.
ETA: In zero gravity that cabin is going to be a swirl of Dorito crumbs and giant kombucha droplets.
trollhattan
Dodged bullet has “thoughts.”
The cameras will eventually cease showing up and we can go back to forgetting Herschel Walker exists. Only his kids and their moms will continue being haunted by him.
jonas
Project HipsterShot is go!
cain
I’d be happy with just sending Elon musk aka Elroy there orbiting the moon like a sad satellite.
dmsilev
@trollhattan: Yes, that’s the one.
If it works as promised, and that’s a huge huge if, it’ll be a major step forward in capability for launching stuff into space. Fully reusable, enormous lifting capacity, etc. But note the big if.
trollhattan
BTW this movie has already been aired on HBO as “Avenue 5.” Fans of sardonic comedy will feel right at home.
Miss Bianca
Man, maybe it’s just a sign of my age, but to me those crew photos look like nothing so much as a cast list for some weird mash-up of Star Trek and 21 Jump Street.
CaseyL
@Sister Golden Bear:
@JoyceH:
Yeah, pregnancy, childbirth, and child-rearing are definitely issues to be avoided when you’re doing space exploration.
But so is the weird partitioning, clique-ing, and breakup drama that inevitably accompanies coupling. (On top of the group dynamics even if there’s no sex.) I’m not aware of lesbians being immune to that.
ETA: Did anyone see the miniseries “Mars,” aired a few years ago on cable? It was a National Geographic production, IIRC, and it was excellent! Took a hard and (I thought) very realistic look at what colonizing Mars would be like.
trollhattan
@dmsilev: Thank you.
Parking one on Mars (per the website) does seem…ambitious.
kindness
After what we’ve seen at Twitter I have to wonder where Musk cuts costs with this one. Do I really want to put my life in the hands of someone who expects engineers to sleep at the office?
JDM
No way this announcement is meant to be a distraction!
Sister Golden Bear
@CaseyL:
We lesbians are experts in that. Although in space there’s no U-Haul.*
*What does a lesbian bring on a second date? A U-haul. It’s an in-joke about the tendency of queer women to fall hard and fast into relationships, often moving in together arguably far too soon, leading to messy break-ups.
A queer dating coach once advised that the lesbian relationship honeymoon period ends much faster, 5-6 months, vs. straight couples, which typically are 12-15 months (i.e. the amount of time needed to conceive a child and see it through the first few months of life). So unless you focus on building a strong foundation relationships often founder when you hit the end of the honeymoon period. As she put it, it’s like trying to build a treehouse on a sapling.
Expletive Deleted
They look like perfectly normal artists to me, which was apparently the brief for selecting the passengers. So making fun of them for their looks seems beside the point.
Even if they had selected eight “appropriately” normal looking middle-aged suburbanites, it seems wildly foolish to send such so many non-astronauts on the first go – from what I understand there will be at least one real astronaut, maybe two, but still. That is the problem, not whether the kids today are wearing their hair funny.
Another Scott
Teslarati.com (from December 6):
Maybe Uncle Sam told him to shut up??
I’m no expert, but it sounds like they’ve got a long way to go before the thing leaves the pad under its own power.
More at the link.
Cheers,
Scott.
SpaceUnit
@Expletive Deleted:
My guess is that the main qualification for this gig is being clueless enough to sign the waiver.
Martin
Yeah, this ain’t gonna happen. The Falcon Heavy lunar flyby didn’t happen because Musk didn’t want to human rate it. Starship will get human rating, but there isn’t even a prototype for a crewed version and that isn’t coming together in the next 12 months.
Boca Chica has moved out of ‘throw shit at the wall’ mode under Musk and has shifted to a more measured effort under Shotwell. Their NASA contract has delivery by 2025, and I’d be shocked if we had a crewed Starship before then. They need Starship to make real money and that’s going to be launching Starlink satellites, not tourism.
Martin
@SpaceUnit: Tim Dodd knows what he’s doing. His gig is covering SpaceX launches, so this gets him more on the inside. Doesn’t even matter if there’s a launch for him to be on, he wins with this.
Jinchi
I was skeptical that he could provision enough air, food and room for an 11-person crew size, but I suppose if he’s running a live-action verion of Among Us, it all makes sense.
Leto
@trollhattan: are we placing bets on who is the cannibal?
SpaceUnit
@Martin:
His platform is a YouTube channel, isn’t it?
dm
@Kent: kind of. Maezawa is a billionaire financing the trip. The others are his guests: artists, performers, and “content creators”.
It would be humbling to be tasked with bringing the majesty and subtlety of this trip to the general public.
I would discount any announced schedule, for all the reasons dmsilev mentions. I would also worry about being on a mission that Elon Musk had tied his ego to.
lowtechcyclist
@Citizen Alan:
Yes, that’s exactly what it looks like!
I would bet serious money that there’s going to be no manned mission in 2023 that orbits the moon and brings its crew back alive.
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: I perhaps phrased my reservations a little too politely…
Matt McIrvin
@trollhattan: Yep.
The mission profile on the web page actually implies that the circumlunar flight is a single launch, no refueling involved. That surprises me but I’m not the expert here. Still, it all just seems very suspicious.
Frank Wilhoit
“…presumably their loved ones have them heavily insured….”
Who in Hell (or on the Moon) would underwrite this???? Prof. Anderson is welcome to weigh in, tho’ liability is not necessarily his corner of the field.
Martin
@Jinchi: Yeah, it’s clear there’s going to be a different version of crew Starship for NASA than what Musk envisions. The HLS version doesn’t require super heavy be human rated as Starship launches, refuels in orbit (SpaceX needs to get on that shit) and then rendezvous with Artemis, land on moon, return to orbit, then rendezvous with Artemis again because it won’t be deemed safe to launch humans on it, or to return them to Earth on it.
So in 2 years they need to:
For the NASA contract it needs to handle a crew of 6. Adding capability for 11 in terms of life support is trivial if the 11 mission is just a flyby, but you do need to reconfigure the vessel to double the crew size.
Just to be clear, Musk thinks he’s sending 100 people on a 6 month Mars journey in each Starship, just to anchor everyone’s understanding of Musk’s predictive ability here.
Martin
@SpaceUnit: Yeah, but he’s got a big enough audience to do that full-time. That’s his job. This grows his audience, gives him content, and keeps him getting exclusive access, even if he backs out at the last minute.
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: It looks like he was on the ISS in December 2021 via a Soyuz launch, and SpaceX sent a crew with 3 tourists to the ISS in April 2022 – both of those launches were 3+ months late (with proven hardware – but with COVID causing all kinds of issues).
The smart bet is that developmental space missions always take longer and cost more than expected. Starship is a huge project and a lot of milestones they haven’t hit yet. SpacePolicyOnline.com (from December 8):
Cheers,
Scott.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Martin: Going by other Musk endeavors Musk and only Musk is the one claiming twelve months He just pulled the same with Neuralink, announcing it was going to be out in six month and only have it walked back that by Neuralink that they are still in animal testing.
I can’t get over the felling Musk got that loan for Twitter because the investors figured Musk trashing Twitter it would keep Musk away from the real money for a year.
Martin
@Frank Wilhoit: Oh, everything can get underwritten. Only question is the cost. There’s always insurers who will take all of your money.
jefft452
@Matt McIrvin: Vaporware dosen’t use much fuel
Frank Wilhoit
@Frank Wilhoit: (I tried to edit this and the edit was lost.)
Under present conditions, no matter how badly this goes wrong, there is no way to impose any consequences on Musk — or upon any private entity in his place. The institutions that might do so have all failed, and failed utterly. It is therefore axiomatically impossible for any private entity to take responsibility for something like this. Only a national government can take this kind of responsibility.
It would in any case be unacceptable to partition responsibility between a national government and a private entity, because the only effect, and therefore the only purpose, of partitioning responsibility is to obscure it and thereby prevent any consequences. (This is why, e.g., outsourcing: it is not economic, it is about the impossibility of assigning blame.)
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
Hell, I am shocked that he did so well, winning 74 percent of the vote there.
trollhattan
@Another Scott: Haven’t kept up on the return to moon thing. Are we proposing a permanent base near one of the poles, in order to investigate and perhaps use ice, detected there?
Not having to transport water would be a boon. Using collected ice to make water and later, oxygen, fuel and such could have many benefits.
Another Scott
@trollhattan: I haven’t kept up either.
You’re right that there’s lots of ice in permanently shadowed craters, mostly at one of the poles. AFAIK, getting usable water, and beyond that hydrogen fuel, from it has just been thought experiments so far.
“Assuming infinite free power and infinite free manufacturing hardware on the Moon, how much water and hydrogen fuel can be extracted??”
:-/
Seriously, the Earth’s gravity well is a huge obstacle to humans going elsewhere. It’s a big problem, and there’s going to have to be a huge investment if we want to solve it. How big that investment should be right now is a legitimate question.
Cheers,
Scott.
Seanly
11 people? By 2023? I’ll all for the Pan Am space station from 2001 as a real destination, but color me skeptical for this endeavor.
You’re going to need lots of O2, water, and food. Plus plenty of places to put waste products – you probably wouldn’t want to introduce a point of failure to expel the waste.
Plus these are 11 randos not people who’ve trained for years. What about health issues during the flight? Pyschological issues – tight quarters, extended weightlessness.
A real spaceship is going to be very cramped. We’re all used to seeing the big spaceships in TV shows with 12′ ceilings (actually, you usually can’t even see the ceiling). They’re in a soundstage where you don’t have to worry about the volume of air you need to contain and recirculate. This thing will make an old WWII diesel sub seem like a McMansion.
Kay
Elon Musk is a liar. He lies constantly. No one has any idea whether his statements about his space company or his car company or his medical device company are true. Judging by his track record a rational person would say “probably not true”.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: I don’t know how much Dorsey walked away from that deal with, but he ought peel off a couple million and get those Dominion lawyers who even scared the Murdochs
I’m guessing no lawyer would’ve approved that “you can make all my emails public” stuff, but still….
One More Red Nightmare
The Artemis 1 spacecraft will splashdown tomorrow after a very successful 25 day mission to the moon. The Orion capsule is human rated (they have dummies with all manner of sensors on them for this mission). I believe the next mission will have a crew but it will be a flyby of the moon.
Orion is the way we will get back to the moon. Finally…
Details at https://www.space.com/news/live/nasa-artemis-1-moon-mission-updates
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
Maned space exploration and colonization are forever to be trapped in Sol’s gravity well, with Earth always serving as the site of frequent long term returns (the biological need for gravity, the radiation shielding, flora, fauna, nutrition, etc.). Our exploration needs to be robotic.
Radiation and microgravity effects on biology are huge. And should anybody figure out the physics and engineering of wormhole creation and create a working Alcubierre drive, you think you’re going to thrive in an environment with a different atmospheric mix? Unknown environmental toxins and poisons?
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Martin:
Basically, he’s Peter Isherwell, high on his own supply and making grandiose, dangerous promises that will frequently go to shit.
Jeffg166
Lots of smelly farts for a week.
pat
Aren’t there people who say, well this planet is dying, let’s go to Mars.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, Gary Legum at Wonkette has fun with an AI Chatbot musical written by Emol and Elton:
[ Narrator – It is not, in fact, a true story. ]
Cheers,
Scott.
One More Red Nightmare
<ol>
The Artemis 1 mission to the moon and the Orion capsule will splashdown tomorrow after a very successful and historic mission to the moon. The SLS launch vehicle performed well as has the Orion crewed capsule (which had dummies aboard with many sensors).
This is how humans will return to the moon.
Details at:
https://www.space.com/news/live/nasa-artemis-1-moon-mission-updates
Another Scott
Meanwhile, part of a new Galeev thread…
I think he may be on to something there (and others have made similar points). And it’s yet another indication of how VVP’s house of terror is so threatened by a prosperous and democratic Ukraine.
Slava Ukraini!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Noskilz
While I wish the crew the best of luck with their space adventure, Musk’s track record makes me expect this to end very badly.
He seems to really be into rushing and cutting corners, and this is a project where sloppiness will get people killed.
TriassicSands
Forgive me for thinking that “space” should be about science and not tourism.
The billionaire hopes that artists will create art that promotes world peace. Obviously, being intelligent isn’t necessarily part of being a billionaire. But, perhaps, the key to world peace is a place without any people, like the moon.
This makes me think of the early days, when we (and the Rooskies) sent chimps and dogs into space. Of course, they didn’t get to say “yes” or “no,” but how realistic are these passive passengers being?
One final thought: I certainly hope that automatic weapons will be allowed on board. I mean, suppressing our single most important constitutional right is a terrible precedent to set. Besides, “Shootout on the Moon” might make a far more interesting story than simply sending a billionaire, a KPOP star, a DJ, and the rest of the crew to the moon in order to create art that will result in world peace, something that is clearly impossible to do on Earth. Eleven humans go to the moon and world peace results. Sounds plausiblen’t [sic].
Elon Musk, trivializing space exploration one mission at a time. Hey, it gets him the attention he so desperately craves.
It’s really too bad that Sinema can’t be on this flight. After all, it would get her lots and lots of attention and she could be checking out the moon as a place for Arizonans to relocate to once their state has run out of water.
Shit, I just keep getting more and more cynical.
Martin
@Seanly: Starship is legitimately huge. The whole approach to Starship is to achieve this. Starship’s pressurized volume is on par to the entire ISS, which can house 6 people for months at a time (don’t ask me how they’re doing 100 people for 6 months to Mars) so 11 people for 6 days should be pretty easy for Starship. But that assumes that SpaceX has time to do that development and construction (they don’t) and if they’re collecting enough money to justify that effort (they aren’t).
So technically this mission is achievable, but logistically and economically I can’t see how it could be. Surely SpaceX is giving NASA priority over some rando billionaire. One of these is a recurring revenue stream and one is not.
But the technical lift isn’t trivial either. Starship can get into LEO, but it’s pretty much stranded there. In order to get to the moon, it needs to be refueled, and that’s never been done before (aside from some minor refueling of ISS). It’s that double launch requirement that allows crew Starship to be so capable. There’s really no other way to achieve this short of in-orbit construction or developing a new propulsion system to get things into orbit.
But the issue here is that of focus. When SpaceX is pursuing a potentially much improved method of exploring the moon or bringing humans to Mars, Musk can’t stop doing this celebrity chasing bullshit. And it takes Musks lieutenants to talk him down from this shit and to get the company back on track. Which, you know, Twitter…
patrick II
@CaseyL:
No, they would be stuck in the tin can with you.
prostratedragon
@dm: “It would be humbling to be tasked with bringing the majesty and subtlety of this trip to the general public.”
Bravura phrasing!
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
Interesting. And infuriating.
I sure hope that something something exceedingly fine is the outcome.
Grr…,
Scott.
Martin
@Another Scott: I think the best explanation of the judges actions are that the judge doesn’t really understand how holding the Trump team in contempt achieves the DOJs or justice’s goals. The way to do that is to indict, and then they and the courts gain the tools they need. If they want the documents back, indict Trump on his existing actions and then turn his life upside down because he’s obviously not going to release them otherwise.
ColoradoGuy
A big missing piece from both Artemis and Starship is the actual moon lander. It’s one thing to fly by, and quite another to land and return to lunar orbit. SpaceX has been tasked by NASA to do this, but I haven’t seen much activity on this front, and this is a non-trivial project to develop … and it includes the EVA suits the lander project will require.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
Trucks are over 125 years old. Thinking about how to improve them is good; throwing out nearly everything learned in the last 125 years is very, very bad.
Cheers,
Scott.
dm
@Martin:
Didn’t the Apollo missions get the Command, Service, and Lunar Excursion Modules to the moon just on the Service module’s engine? Granted the Starship is tons bigger, but it gets lifted to orbit by a first stage, not on its own power.
Also, this trip doesn’t get them to the moon, it just gets them to that point between where the moon’s gravity takes over. They don’t even have to do an engine burn to return to Earth from the moon (they do have to land on the Earth, of course).
I think in-orbit refueling is for escape velocity to get to Mars?
Jackie
Interesting article about Oath Keeper Jeremy Brown’s trial being held in Tampa. He was at the Capitol Jan 6.
“Government lawyers are emphasizing the danger posed by weapons and U.S. Department of Defense documents labeled “secret” that a search of self-professed Oath Keeper Jeremy Brown’s property turned up as his trial progresses in a federal courthouse in Tampa.
As the Phoenix has reported, Brown initially was charged with trespassing at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, but the case the government is prosecuting against the retired Green Beret from Tampa centers on is the illegally registered guns, explosives, and documents that law enforcement officers found immediately after they arrested him.
At the heart of Brown’s legal defense is that federal agents planted the explosives — specifically, two hand-grenades — in retaliation for Brown going public with an accusation that the FBI asked him to serve as an informant on right-wing paramilitary groups, in his case the Oath Keepers.”
Much more at the link:
https://floridaphoenix.com/2022/12/06/the-u-s-government-presents-its-case-against-jan-6-defendant-jeremy-brown/
m.j.
@CaseyL:https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/
Sure you can skip around and get to the exciting bits, but do you have the right stuff for the rest.
Another Scott
@ColoradoGuy: NASA is asking for more companies to bid (from November 15):
They want to build up a sustainable US space industry (which means enough regular missions to keep people working and money coming in). If SpaceX cannot deliver, NASA will find someone else who can.
Cheers,
Scott.
Glidwrith
Honestly, I had toyed with the notion of going to space, if possible, until I watched the first season of The Expanse. Really drove home how thin the line is between life and sucking vacuum. No desire whatsoever now to leave what is truly an oasis in a brutally lifeless environment.
Martin
@ColoradoGuy: SpaceXs lunar lander is just a variant of Starship. Its ability to do propulsive landings on Earth should allow it to do so on the moon, though with a very different software profile.
That still leaves some really issues to sort out – how do the crew get down to the surface (elevator, of sorts), how do they deliver other kinds of cargo, rovers, etc. since the idea is to build a base there. My guess is that a single Raptor engine can throttle low enough to handle the landing, and the legs and suspension for landing on earth should trivially handle a lunar landing. There’s a significant problem at first of having surface radar to identify a flat enough place to land, but NASA kind of has that tech worked out from various other missions. The longer term idea is to build a landing pad so Starship doesn’t shotgun everything around it with debris.
But the generally hard stuff of propulsion and landing software is largely solved – it just needs to be tailored to this task. But this why I don’t think this flyby will happen – so much of the necessary work by SpaceX is tied up in the same team of people. There’s not really a lot for the rocket guys to work on and there’s too much for the crew capsule/life support guys to work on.
Martin
@dm: Yeah. The problem is Tsiolkovsky’s rocket equation. Getting the fuel needed to get to the moon really impacts the life support and structural budget you have for the craft. By bringing the propellant you need after LEO in a separate launch, you solve that problem in a manner of speaking.
But it’s a solution that only works with reuse. Once you eliminate the cost of building single use rockets (fuel is cheap) then the problem shifts to logistics and ground capability. SpaceX is on the right track here, but there’s a bunch of brand new problems to solve.
I think the only way Starship can do a non-refuel lunary flyby (and still do a propulsive Earth landing) is to build a bespoke variant for that purpose, which is why I don’t think it’ll happen. The whole point of Starship is that it can do 100t to LEO in reuse mode. That’s about what we did during Apollo, but that was landing a much tinier craft on the moon, and leaving most of it behind. SpaceXs lunar contract requires refueling in orbit to get there. Mars is even harder because it requires a surface refuel on Mars. But other than this *one* tourist mission, Starship is designed to only carry enough fuel to get into orbit and to get home, and rely on refueling for everything past LEO.
I mean, SpaceX already needs to build 3 different Starship configurations in the next 2 years – a Starlink deployment variant because that’s their revenue stream, an orbital tanker variant for the Artemis program, a lunar landing variant for the same program. This looks like a 4th variant to me. And they all need to be done maybe 6 months after the next Orion/Artemis launch, which is just building a 2nd set of hardware that they just successful launched – not doing a bunch of original R&D, finishing the design of a lifter and doing the design of 2 unmanned and 1 manned craft, and also building those craft.
Martin
@Another Scott: So far NASA has been unable to. In the bids for the contract SpaceX won, none of the other entries were even capable of performing the mission on paper.
Full reuse is such a profound change in the economics of space access that until other players catch up to SpaceX there, they really can’t compete. Blue Origin has been a real disappointment on that front. It sure looked like they were capable of at least following SpaceX but they seem incapable of competently building anything. I mean, they founded 2 years before SpaceX did but SpaceX is doing a bit more than a launch per week and only needed to build 4 rockets this year. BO is only doing suborbital tourist flights, and even managed to fuck one of them up.
Rokka
Good to see that Steve Aoki is part of the crew, what could possibly go wrong?
DJ Falls Off Stage
Ryan
Tesla Autopilot perchance?
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
Space – the final fraudtier
artem1s
pretty good odds SpaceX doesn’t last long enough to complete the Artemis project let alone start the 5-10 decades of research and testing needed to get a manned crew to Mars. This is the real drawback to the ‘commercialization’ of space. If there isn’t a product to sell, you can’t make money while you are in the R&D phase. Filling up a tin can with a bunch of B list celebrities like it’s an episode of the Bachelor so they can sell ad buys and NFT’s of their ‘art’ is not gonna get a green light from NASA. And last I checked they have control over the launch pad. They aren’t going to buy into another PR nightmare that could mean having their planetary mission budgets slashed for a couple of decades again just so a bunch of kids can play at being Buzz Lightyear. The faster Elon gets booted from SpaceX the better. They might be able to salvage some workable science and tech from the company before he completely ruins them.
Mark Regan
@dm:
Didn’t Apollo refire the third Saturn stage in order to get out of Earth orbit? The Service Module engine was sufficient for getting out of lunar orbit, and the LEM engine was sufficient for getting Apollo 13 onto a free return, but to get to the Moon Apollo needed the third stage.