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NASA Awards Contract to Launch Initial Elements for Lunar Outpost
NASA has selected Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, California, to provide launch services for the agency's Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) and Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO), the foundational elements of the Gateway. As the first long-term orbiting outpost around the Moon, the Gateway is critical to supporting sustainable astronauts missions under the agency's Artemis program.
After integration on Earth, the PPE and HALO are targeted to launch together no earlier than May 2024 on a Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The total cost to NASA is approximately $331.8 million, including the launch service and other mission-related costs.
The PPE is a 60-kilowatt class solar electric propulsion spacecraft that also will provide power, high-speed communications, attitude control, and the capability to move the Gateway to different lunar orbits, providing more access to the Moon's surface than ever before.
The HALO is the pressurized living quarters where astronauts who visit the Gateway, often on their way to the Moon, will work. It will provide command and control and serve as the docking hub for the outpost. HALO will support science investigations, distribute power, provide communications for visiting vehicles and lunar surface expeditions, and supplement the life support systems aboard Orion, NASA's spacecraft that will deliver Artemis astronauts to the Gateway.
The Falcon Heavy will use an extended payload fairing.
Also at Spaceflight Now, TechCrunch, Teslarati, and Wccftech.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday February 11 2021, @12:33AM
Damn, I'm reading the wrong novel!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 11 2021, @12:43AM (2 children)
Because Old Muskie has a hard-on for bitcoin.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 11 2021, @01:51AM
At $44,584.81 per BTC that's about 7442 BTC.
Please note you are a lazy fuck for not doing this yourself.
(Score: 2) by oumuamua on Thursday February 11 2021, @03:13AM
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1340581313406001153?s=20 [twitter.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mhajicek on Thursday February 11 2021, @02:45AM (7 children)
Chipping away at the reasons for SLS to exist.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 11 2021, @03:02AM
Europa Clipper is liberated [soylentnews.org], Lunar Gateway modules are flying separately. The only thing left would be to send the astronauts there on a different vehicle.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by crafoo on Thursday February 11 2021, @03:08AM (3 children)
SLS never needed to exist. It was always pork for fat, stupid, and lazy corps and the politicians they have bought off.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Immerman on Thursday February 11 2021, @02:52PM (2 children)
I disagree - we needed *something*, and the SLS was supposed to be a quick and dirty solution. When the SLS program was started in 2011 we had just retired the Space Shuttle - which had been an expensive albatross around NASA's neck for decades, albeit one that could at least get them to low orbit.
At the time SpaceX was a scrappy young rocket company on the verge of bankruptcy that had only managed to reach orbit four times - their last two out of 5 Falcon 1 launches, and two Falcon 9 test launches. And it had only 1/3rd the payload capacity to LEO as the shuttle, and neither the track record or the political connections to be taken seriously.
Meanwhile the Falcon Heavy was still little more than a long-term idea, and wouldn't fly for another seven years, long after the SLS should have flown.
Which meant we had to rely on the Russians to get humans or heavy loads to orbit, and our only realistic options for getting heavy payloads to orbit would be to try to resurrect the ancient Saturn V program (which might actually have been a good call), or develop something new.
I think the big problem with the SLS was the cost-plus contract with no penalties for missed milestones. Had it flown on-time and on-budget... it would have delivered 3.5x (eventually almost 5x) the Space-shuttle capacity in a more versatile form factor (e.g. launching fairing-clad payloads, rather than just what could be squeezed into the shuttle's cargo bay)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday February 11 2021, @07:00PM
Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!
We have a winner!
Cost Plus means no consequences. It actually gives incentive to being both late and over budget. Always.
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 12 2021, @04:10AM
That is essentially what SLS is: A Saturn V built from Shuttle parts. And that is actually the biggest problem with it. Shelby and friends required the SLS to be built that way so that their campaign contributors would be guaranteed to get the contracts to build it. This is the exact same reason the F-35 is the mess it is. Same bloated manufacturers. Same corrupt politicians.
(Score: 2) by Frosty Piss on Thursday February 11 2021, @04:10AM
And the ULA / Boeing.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday February 11 2021, @07:03PM
The Senator from Alabama has announced his retirement.
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.
(Score: 2) by Frosty Piss on Thursday February 11 2021, @04:07AM (9 children)
Jeff Bezos is at this moment having a major conniption... Or is that Boeing?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 11 2021, @04:17AM (6 children)
Bezos has his company's "do a little bit, slowly" ethos to blame. New Glenn could be superior to Falcon Heavy, but by the time it flies regularly it will be competing with Starship.
I think the plan years ago was to send modules and astronauts simultaneously using SLS (ULA/Boeing), but it has long since become apparent that SpaceX would be launching the modules. So no conniptions.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Thursday February 11 2021, @04:47AM (3 children)
Seriously, why would Bezos give a shit about a Lunar Gateway? Is there going to be a moon colony with everyone signed up with Amazon Prime and the customer complaints, about their packages being late, are going to overwhelm his outsourced customer service department?
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0x663EB663D1E7F223
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Thursday February 11 2021, @05:53AM (2 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Moon_(spacecraft) [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Thursday February 11 2021, @06:39AM (1 child)
Ok. I give up. You win. The world wins.
I'm stupid. You're smart.
Pizza delivery to the moon in 30 minutes or less.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0x663EB663D1E7F223
(Score: 3, Informative) by Socrastotle on Thursday February 11 2021, @09:44AM
If you like Sci-fi I'd recommend Artemis. It kind of sucks because Andy Weir, author and the author of The Martian as well, was clearly going for a Hugo and thus obligated to bump the pandering up to 11, but outside of that it paints an amusing and believable picture of a colonization of the moon, including the nuances of delivery.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Thursday February 11 2021, @09:48AM (1 child)
Any recommend reference on the happenings of Blue Origin? I haven't been following their happenings so much and just assumed their lack of progress was due to truth behind the old joke:
- What do you call a billionaire who starts an aerospace company?
- A millionaire.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday February 11 2021, @03:18PM
I would also be interested, but they don't seem to share much, maybe even less than Boeing, etc.
Seems to me their big thing is selling rocket engines. Their rockets themselves seem to be doomed to also-ran status for the foreseeable future, though as things mature they'll probably be well positioned to become SpaceX's first major competitor. They won't be able to compete on raw payload capacity, but I suspect it'll be a long time before Starship routinely flies with anything remotely close to their max payload anyway.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday February 11 2021, @07:07PM (1 child)
The choice does not need to be mutually exclusive.
Boeing has lost their way now that McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing, using Boeing's money. Then McDonnell Douglas managers took over. Moved the company headquarters away from engineering an closer to Wall Street. Because that's what is most important! Then the company became less and less about doing engineering.
Blue Origin should focus on trying to do something fast. Just because you have lots of resources doesn't mean you should just poke along. If anything, it means you should be doing even more even faster. Or more concurrently. Blowing up even more things, not fewer. Blue Origin hasn't yet even gotten something into orbit and they've been around longer than SpaceX.
But what about ULA?
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 12 2021, @04:16AM
ULA was Boeing's (failed) attempt to kill the commercial launch program. They are still seething that SpaceX was allowed to bid for ISS cargo launches and this is just another item on the list.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 11 2021, @04:49AM (3 children)
This is a piss poor use of tax dollars. Even giving the money to inner city niggers to buy drugs would be more productive than anything SpaceX does.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 11 2021, @08:59AM (2 children)
We're wasting it on SpaceX because everybody else would be charging quite literally 10 times as much for the same service. This is a striking, if seldom, example of "small government" at work, by "buying American" and using COTS services that directly support >6000 highly skilled American workers and a host of equally qualified subcontractors. Well, they could have completely skipped useless SLS before still buying SpaceX, but we can't have everything.
If you were actually talking about the usefulness of space tracel, the complete endeavour ... well ... considering ... what has the military engegament in Afghanistan recently done for us? That costs >100 times as much (2018 numbers) ... per year ... for ten years and counting. That would also be much more lots of crack for the niggers, methinks ... won't somebody think of the drug dealers?
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday February 11 2021, @03:46PM (1 child)
Recently? What did it ever do?
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday February 11 2021, @03:49PM
Actually I suppose it did give us the hilarity of
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/01/11/17/204207/message-from-kabul [slashdot.org]