SpaceX has won a big NASA contract to fly cargo to the Moon
"This is another critical piece of our plan to return to the Moon sustainably."
[...] Last summer, NASA put out a call for companies who would be willing to deliver cargo to a proposed station in orbit around the Moon, called the Lunar Gateway. On Friday, NASA announced that the first award under this "Gateway Logistics" contract would go to SpaceX.
The company has proposed using its Falcon Heavy rocket to deliver a modified version of its Dragon spacecraft, called Dragon XL, to the Lunar Gateway. After delivering cargo, experiments and other supplies, the spacecraft would be required to remain docked at the Gateway for a year before "autonomous" disposal.
"This contract award is another critical piece of our plan to return to the Moon sustainably," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a news release. "The Gateway is the cornerstone of the long-term Artemis architecture, and this deep space commercial cargo capability integrates yet another American industry partner into our plans for human exploration at the Moon in preparation for a future mission to Mars."
SpaceX's most powerful rocket will send NASA cargo to the moon's orbit to supply astronauts:
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration on Friday picked SpaceX as the first supplier to bring cargo to the agency's Gateway station in orbit around the moon, a big contract win for Elon Musk's space company.
SpaceX said it will use a new variation of its cargo spacecraft, called Dragon XL, to carry "more than 5 metric tons of cargo to Gateway in lunar orbit." The company will lift the spacecraft using its Falcon Heavy rocket, the most powerful rocket in the world.
I thought SLS was going to return us to the moon.
Related Stories
New document reveals significant fall from grace for Boeing's space program
[A] new document released by NASA reveals the broader scope of Boeing's apparent decline in spaceflight dominance. The "source selection statement" from NASA explains the space agency's rationale for selecting SpaceX over three other companies—Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Sierra Nevada Corporation—to deliver large supplies of cargo to lunar orbit. NASA announced its selection of SpaceX for this "Gateway Logistics" contract in late March. The selection document says that SpaceX provided the best technical approach and the lowest price by a "significant" margin.
This lunar cargo contract is essentially the third in a series of three "commercial" contracts NASA has offered to buy services at a fixed price over the last dozen years. First came cargo delivery to low-Earth orbit. Final selections for that program were SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, a company now owned by Northrop Grumman, in 2008. Second came crew delivery to low-Earth orbit in 2014. The final selections were SpaceX and Boeing, with its now-troubled Starliner spacecraft.
When comparing the selection rationale for the 2014 commercial crew contracts with the rationale for the recent Gateway logistics contract, the perception of Boeing's offering could not be more stark. In 2014, Boeing was very much perceived as the gold-standard—expensive, yes, but also technically masterful. In 2020, the company was still perceived as expensive but not ultimately worthy of consideration.
[...] Six years later, the perception of Boeing's bid for the lunar cargo contract is much changed. Of the four contenders, it had the lowest overall technical and mission suitability scores. In addition, Boeing's proposal was characterized as "inaccurate" and possessing no "significant strengths." Boeing also was cited with a "significant weakness" in its proposal for pushing back on providing its software source code.
Due to its high price and ill-suited proposal for the lunar cargo contract, NASA didn't even consider the proposal among the final bidders. In his assessment late last year, NASA's acting chief of human spaceflight, Ken Bowersox, wrote, "Since Boeing's proposal was the highest priced and the lowest rated under the Mission Suitability factor, while additionally providing a conditional fixed price, I have decided to eliminate Boeing from further award consideration."
Previously: NASA Picks SpaceX for Lunar Missions
Related: Boeing to Launch Starliner Spacecraft for Second Go at Reaching the ISS after First Mission Failed
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday March 28 2020, @02:20PM (9 children)
The station should be in an earth-moon orbit.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @02:54PM (8 children)
Yeah I'm sure all those engineers are all dumber than some random basement dweller on the internet...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @03:29PM (2 children)
Eh, be as stupid as you want, it would be a 'figure 8' orbit between earth and moon, the way the Apollo flights went up. If they didn't fire the retro rocket when at the moon, the craft would loop around and return on its own, and so on.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Immerman on Saturday March 28 2020, @06:47PM (1 child)
Problem is that was a transpotation trajectory, no such stable orbit exists. Which means the space station would have to constantly do serious station-keeping maneuvers to maintain it's orbit.
I'm not even sure it's possible to find a trajectory that will travel to the moon a second time without substantial added propulsion - you'd need some pretty substantial precession to pull it off. In Apollo's 6-day round trip to the moon and back, the moon will have moved roughly 80 degrees around the Earth, while the apogee of the station's orbit would still be somewhere near where the moon was the first time.
You might be able to work out some sort of highly eccentric Earth orbit that would swing around the moon every 5th orbit or something - but it would almost certainly not be stable - there's vanishingly few orbits involving the moon that are stable - even orbitting the moon directly fr any length of time is a real challenge - you only have a relative handful orbits that won't rapidly destabilize due to the Earth's influence.
The other issue is that a big part of the declared purpose of the Lunar Gateway Station, is to develop the technologies necessary to routinely service a space station at such a large distance, which in some ways is a substantially bigger challenge than reaching the ISS a few hundred miles from the surface. Basically - most of the technologies necessary to eventually service a lunar base, lacking only the lunar lander. As well as providing a place to berth a reusable lunar lander so that it wouldn't have to be carried up from Earth/low orbit every time.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday March 28 2020, @07:21PM
Yeah, if I picture it right, the station would have to pass a little too close to the planet's core to perform that slingshot at escape velocity.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 28 2020, @03:35PM (4 children)
Here, there's several warning signs for Lunar Gateway: 1) has a strong dependency on SLS, 2) doesn't serve a useful role - nobody has a real plan for it, 3) nor is in a good trajectory for sending or receiving things from outside of the Moon - L4 or L5 Earth-Moon is better (particularly for low delta-v trajectories [wikipedia.org] throughout the Solar System) and the latter has a delta-v [wikipedia.org] requirement that's moderately worse (2.3 km/s versus roughly 1.6 km/s) for putting things on the Moon, has no firm schedule on when it would launch (in large part due to that SLS dependency), and 4) takes more propellant to maintain that orbit than a similar station would need for the Lagrange points, meaning more need for costly service missions.
My view is that this scheme will be scuttled when the SLS program collapses. Let's keep in mind that when the SLS program was started, they were planning to first launch in 2018, now, two years later, first launch is still yet to be scheduled (they're claiming [theverge.com] 2021, we'll see). They have spent over $14 billion [wikipedia.org] on this thing (probably well over $16 billion by now since that doesn't include 2019 or 2020 spending). That would have bought plenty of Falcon Heavy launches for putting up several Lunar Gateways.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday March 28 2020, @03:53PM
Like the shuttle, it's all designed for 'cost-saving' pork. A lunar orbit does not make sense. It will take a lot less fuel to simply 'coast' from earth to moon back and forth. Pick up and drop off would be very little like the old days [wikimedia.org]
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by legont on Saturday March 28 2020, @05:17PM (2 children)
I think it's main purpose is to show progress while real missions are not quite possible yet.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 28 2020, @07:17PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday March 28 2020, @07:33PM
It's likely that expendable Falcon Heavy with Dragon XL can launch any component of the Gateway. Dragon XL, which I assume has a larger volume than the standard payload fairing or Cargo Dragon, is being created primarily for this purpose. So SLS is no longer needed, which is important if you want to get anything done by 2024.
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/03/dragon-xl-nasa-spacex-lunar-gateway-supply-contract/ [nasaspaceflight.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Gateway [wikipedia.org]
SLS's justification is now... we spent all that money on it. And they will send astronauts on it. Unless that also changes.
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Saturday March 28 2020, @02:21PM (15 children)
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/03/dragon-xl-nasa-spacex-lunar-gateway-supply-contract/ [nasaspaceflight.com]
5 metric tons to TLI/lunar orbit seems low, and may be too low for some Lunar Gateway [wikipedia.org] modules that could be in the 8-10 ton range, such as the Power and Propulsion Element. But that number is almost certainly for a reusable mode Falcon Heavy with 3 landed boosters. They can launch more in expendable mode and still get the module to lunar orbit cheaper than competitors.
If Dragon XL can offer more volume/width than the normal payload fairing, that could be useful for some Air Force launches.
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(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday March 28 2020, @02:35PM (10 children)
If the station were in earth-moon orbit, all the boosters could be returned to earth for reuse, along with a bunch of moon rocks, and the station itself can be expanded piecemeal while in service.
Doesn't seem like that's ever going to happen though.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday March 28 2020, @03:43PM (6 children)
The manned space program is always going to suck until NASA starts paying for hundreds of fully reusable rocket launches. Until then, it's just goofing around.
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(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday March 28 2020, @04:18PM (5 children)
Yes, propulsion is still ancient bottle rockets. We need big changes there.
I'm not convinced a manned space program is the way to go. We should polish up on the automation (robotics) first to mitigate the effort needed to survive and thrive.
Space is a great place to visit to see the sights, but I wouldn't want to live there. I'm happy with the spaceship we're riding on right now, doesn't require a lot of human effort to maintain with resources we haven't begun to explore to make life even easier. We have to make our portable equipment operate the same way.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday March 28 2020, @04:35PM (4 children)
The U.S. has spent hundreds of billions on manned space programs over the decades, the big one being the Space Shuttle. It seems like that kind of money will still be around, especially if we can suddenly get 10x bang for the buck. The usual suspects will make sure that manned spaceflight continues, even if they aren't involved with launching the payloads.
Robotic exploration and telescopes will just greatly benefit from fully reusable launches. Not only that, but lower cost per launch and huge payload fairings could allow universities and smaller countries to attempt some of the same kinds of missions that only NASA, ESA, etc. do today (instead of a cheapo CubeSat rideshare).
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(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday March 28 2020, @06:36PM (3 children)
Robotic exploration and telescopes will just greatly benefit from fully reusable launches.
I'm not disagreeing with that. I'm only asking if you think it would be cheaper and more practical, logical to have the orbiting station on a regular orbit between the moon and earth instead just hanging around the moon all day. You can have people prepping the boosters for drop off on return while in transit.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 28 2020, @07:26PM (1 child)
It's actually a rather complicated figure eight orbit with as I understand it a relatively high propellant cost just to maintain orbit. And twice an orbit, it'd be cutting through the L1 Lagrange point [wikipedia.org] (which is about 90% of the way to the Moon from Earth) which promises to be busy in the long run. My take is that it'd be easier just to keep the station at L1 even though that is unstable (it's not very unstable if one corrects regularly).
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday March 28 2020, @07:59PM
It's actually a rather complicated figure eight orbit with as I understand it a relatively high propellant cost just to maintain orbit.
Yeah, it won't fly...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday March 28 2020, @07:39PM
I am fine with putting stations in low Earth orbit or up to geosynchronous, and putting boots directly on the ground anywhere else, such as the Moon and Mars. No stations in lunar or semi-lunar orbit required, at least this century.
Maybe you can use this [wikipedia.org] but I'm not sure it's necessary.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @05:16PM (2 children)
I'm not sure what benefit an Earth-Moon orbit would provide. It doesn't save any fuel. It's not as though you can "hop on" as it passes; you first have to match orbits, which means you'll go to the Moon whether the station was there or not. It might make sense for a long-duration mission (i.e. a living habitat for ongoing missions to Mars), but it seems overkill for a 3-day trip.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday March 28 2020, @06:07PM (1 child)
That's ok. You attach the rocket(s) outside the station, and even use them for course corrections, and bring everything back to earth for reuse. And four stations will give you daily service. You can put a bunch of payloads into a parking orbit until the station comes around, then they accelerate and latch on. Think of it as a coal train, with only four cars, but you can keep adding more. It would be much cheaper to build and launch them from the moon. That's where the robots have to fill in. Use them to make things real comfy for the people.
But that's for space stuff. For terrestrial needs, let's see what we find when we dig a little deeper than eight miles.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @06:43PM
But the boosters can do that just fine without the station. You have to put them in the exact same orbit as the station in order to attach them, then you have to unattach them and change their orbits to do anything with them (such as land them).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 28 2020, @03:38PM (3 children)
Another alternative here is two launch Falcon Heavy (or even Falcon 9) missions to LEO. One with the payload and one with the booster and propellant necessary to get the payload to either lunar orbit or a Lagrange point. None of the payloads would be out of reach for a pair of Falcon 9s, much less a pair of Falcon Heavies.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday March 28 2020, @03:42PM (2 children)
I don't think SpaceX will even attempt to do that. Any in-orbit refueling efforts will be focused on Starship, which is intended to make Falcon 9 and Heavy completely obsolete once customers can trust in it.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 28 2020, @04:05PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 28 2020, @07:28PM
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @04:35PM
You can contract with a commercial company to get 5T to lunar orbit.
In the 60's that took a national priority effort.
Quite a gap between those two.
Interesting to think about where classic space companies fit into that gap today.
But quite encouraging if you are interested in actually doing things in space.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @04:50PM (2 children)
Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars. [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @06:09PM
Cold as fuck!
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Saturday March 28 2020, @09:52PM
Obligatory Mars spring 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjiGH9QNiU0 [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday March 29 2020, @12:30AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrEVwu5PH_Y [youtube.com]
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