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SpaceX Now Claims They Might Return Humans to the Moon Even Before 2024
SpaceX Now Claims They Might Return Humans to The Moon Even Before 2024:
It's no secret that a new Space Race has been brewing over the past few years. This time, rather than being a competition between two federal space agencies, the race has more competitors and is more complicated.
In addition to more state competitors, there are also commercial space entities vying for positions and lucrative contracts. Add to that a network of public-private partnerships, and you have Space Race 2.0!
In particular, there has been quite the stir ever since NASA awarded the Artemis contract for the Human Landing System (HLS) to SpaceX. This resulted in legal challenges filed by Blue Origin and Dynetics (SpaceX's competitors), as well as a lawsuit and messy public relations campaign.
NASA has since removed the stop-work order and commenced payments to SpaceX, which recently indicated their HLS concept could be ready to go before the 2024 deadline.
As part of the NextSTEP – 2 Appendix H program, NASA selected SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Dynetics to develop the HLS that will take the Artemis III astronauts back to the lunar surface. Initially, NASA hoped to award contracts to two of these companies but ultimately went with SpaceX due to budget constraints and timetables.
In response, Blue Origin and Dynetics filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
SpaceX Thinks It Can Send Humans to the Moon Sooner Than 2024 - Universe Today
SpaceX Thinks it can Send Humans to the Moon Sooner Than 2024 - Universe Today adds:
The SpaceX HLS concept is a modified version of the Starship, which is currently undergoing rapid development (along with the Super Heavy booster) at SpaceX's launch facility near Boca Chica. According to the latest mockup (shown above) and previous statements by Musk, the HLS Starship will have a higher payload capacity since it will not require heat shields, flaps, and large gas thruster packs (all of which are needed for atmospheric reentry).
It also comes with wider landing legs, which future Starships may do away with entirely now that SpaceX is building the "Mechazilla" launch tower. In any case, concerns about potential delays and fulfilling the 2024 deadline go beyond the four months lost due to the GAO's stop order. In addition, there are reported issues with the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Units (xEMU) spacesuits, leading to fears that they won't be ready in time.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Monday August 23 2021, @01:46PM (10 children)
According to this [arstechnica.com] on Friday morning:
So to summarize:
It would be amazing if SpaceX could merely send humans around the moon and back to Earth (Apollo 8 style), on their own dime. Now how would that make SpaceX look as a candidate contractor for Lunar HLS?
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Monday August 23 2021, @01:58PM
Blue Origin lawsuit forces SpaceX, NASA to stop joint work on Starship Moon lander [teslarati.com]
SpaceX Starship factory breaks ground on an even bigger ‘high bay’ [teslarati.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Monday August 23 2021, @02:04PM (1 child)
SpaceX isn't slowing down their Starship work at all, and that needs to be developed before the lunar variant. I'm hoping they can put boots on Luna before SLS and Orion can.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 23 2021, @02:33PM
Next, Bezos will send Chinese prostitute spies to the FAA.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 23 2021, @06:45PM (2 children)
That thought has occurred to me. It would be like Musk to do a little showboating. And, it would be pretty awesome if Musk rode that ship, and gloated over the other wannabe space traveling billionaires from lunar orbit. Even more awesome if he spent a week in lunar orbit, taking high resolution videos of all the past lunar landing sites.
Huh - the list of impact and/or landing sites is longer than I thought. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_the_Moon [wikipedia.org] It might take two weeks to get a good video inventory!
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 23 2021, @10:14PM (1 child)
Musk doesn't need to ride his rockets to showboat. Just putting one on the stand is enough to attract all the attention he could ever want. In any case he is far too busy working on his next big project to have time for a week's vacation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 24 2021, @05:41PM
His next big project? Trolling and writing puff pieces aobut himself?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 23 2021, @07:44PM (1 child)
What does 'halted' mean?
Perhaps that NASA can't help with folks or money?
Seems that both could persue independent things they are interested in until the lawyers sort out how Blue should fit into the picture (or not).
Hopefully, the contract that X agreed to is not too much of a diversion and just augments what they wanted to do anyway.
I'd like to think that NASA brings useful lessons to the table aside from cash. Hopefully that part still can work.
Definitely not a nice move by the management at Blue. I don't see how to get to the moon with lawyers. Enginners seem more useful for the task.
(Unless the lawyers are who they wish to send first? ;-)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 23 2021, @10:37PM
It means that NASA aren't allowed to talk to SpaceX about HLS, do any related paperwork, or make any more milestone payments*. It might also mean that SpaceX aren't allowed to spend the $300M they've been paid so far. Bezos will probably try to argue that it also means that SpaceX have to stop all work on Starship, but that isn't something NASA could agree to even if they wanted to.
*The Nov 1 date is important because that is when NASA's next budget cycle starts and the HLS funds for this year are pretty much already spent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 23 2021, @10:05PM
DearMoon [wikipedia.org] is scheduled for 2023.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday August 23 2021, @11:48PM
As others have said, most of the orbital Starship work needs to be done before it makes sense to work on the changes for a lunar version, and there's much work still to do.
Also, there's not actually any *need* for a specialized lunar version - a normal Mars/interplanetary version with landing legs could get people to the moon's surface and back just fine. The Lunar Starship is only necessary to reduce the risk of blasting lunar debris into orbit with the engine backwash, and to meet whatever other mission requirements NASA has.
Finally, since going around the moon would likely still require orbital refueling, the only essential difference between going around the moon, and landing on it (in a non-Lunar Starship) is the number of refueling flights, and the need for the landing legs that have currently been scrapped from the initial orbital Starship design in favor of being caught out of the air by Mechzilla.
Of course, there's also risk to consider - they probably want to fly a lot of orbital flights before their first human passengers, to make sure they've got all the bugs worked out. And they probably want to perform a lot of landings before they land their person on the moon for the same reason. But most of those landings can probably be on Earth, where the conditions are much harsher. With just the last one or two being on the moon to see if they encounter any unexpected problems.