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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: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday August 24 2021, @12:31AM (4 children)
Why do it at all?
Because if humanity doesn't expand into space eventually we go extinct and everything we are and have accomplished will cease to exist. At the very latest when our star expands into a red giant in a billion or two years, but probably much sooner due to plague, asteroid impact, or other major environmental upheaval. Mass extinctions happen fairly frequently on Earth, and the apex dominant tend to suffer the worst of it.
Why now?
Why not? There's no time like the present, and the Moon offers a wonderful stepping stone into the rest of the solar system. Essentially it's a stupidly large asteroid already caught in Earth's orbit. Poor in materials that would be valuable on Earth, but a good proving ground for developing much of the technology to mine much richer asteroids further afield. And the entire surface is rich in industrially valuable oxygen, silicon, aluminum, and iron, as well as apparently having substantial deposits of water ice in more selective locations. All potentially accessible with relatively crude technology that could scale out rapidly with a minimal mass of resources from Earth. And whoever gets a foothold there first will likely enjoy a prolonged period of disproportionate reward - just as Britain and Spain captured the lion's share of the early wealth extracted from the Americas.
Why else?
Because several of our geopolitical competitors are on broadly the same trajectory, and the Moon is the ultimate high ground. A unilateral industrial presence on the moon would give that country a huge strategic and tactical advantage both in expanding their control into the rest of the solar system, and in conflict on Earth. The same railgun or other extremely efficient way to launch lunar resources into orbit would also allow for cheaply bombarding Earth with rocks that would impact with the energy of a nuclear bomb, with none of the radioactive fallout. Add a dinky little rocket and guidance package to fine-tune the trajectory, and perhaps even some atmospheric guidance, and you could strike with as much precision as you wished. Or just rely on the threat of "nuclear" carpet-bombing anyone who objects to your actions. An unlimited, fallout-free "nuclear" arsenal would be a powerful strategic asset.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 24 2021, @05:55PM (1 child)
The Universe isn't interested in preserving your meat sack. It is stuck on Earth forever. Try going in the other direction.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday August 25 2021, @04:11AM
Of course it isn't. Which is why if we want our species to survive *we* have to be the ones to do the work. In theory we should be able to thrive almost anywhere that has energy and the raw elements needed to build hardware and ecosystems. In practice it's likely to take a long time before such life is remotely as comfortable as on Earth. But there's mysteries to solve and money to be made to drive the uncomfortable early stages of development.
We should certainly also be taking better care of Earth, there is no gem remotely comparable to the world we are designed to fit. But so long as that's the only place we live, we *will* die. There is no other direction to go. If we survive everything else, we all die when the Earth is completely vaporized in the expanding atmosphere of the sun.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 26 2021, @11:42PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday August 27 2021, @02:19PM
Of course. But Lucy was still "us", as will be whatever we become a million years from now. A species is a flowing river that splits and sometimes merges. Some branches end, others thrive and spawn new branches. But so long as we stay on Earth, *all* our branches will end. If we want to keep ours from ending, we must eventually leave Earth. And there are no guarantees as to how long we will have that option. Eventually civilization will collapse, it always does, and without convenient fossil fuels there's no guarantee we'll ever be able to get back to where we are now.
In fact, one of the advantages establishing an independent offworld colony is to provide a repository of civilization separate enough that it's unlikely to be brought down by the same collapse, which would be capable of jump-starting civilization on Earth. You need a minimum level of technology to be able to build solar panels, large wind turbines, and other such non-fossil sources of energy, and reaching that level without plentiful fossil fuels to sustain growth may well be impossible.