NASA's Artemis Program Updates and Discussion Thread 4

[clongton]

The SpaceX Depot for HLS ... will probably not be configured to fuel other types of spacecraft. A fuelling operation will require the other ship to implement the SpaceX Depot interface, which will be a whole lot more complicated than just a couple of hoses.

The SpaceX depot will be refueling SpaceX spacecraft - only. Nobody else uses CH4 as a propellant and that's what will be in the depot.

[Zed_Noir]

The SpaceX Depot for HLS ... will probably not be configured to fuel other types of spacecraft. A fuelling operation will require the other ship to implement the SpaceX Depot interface, which will be a whole lot more complicated than just a couple of hoses.

The SpaceX depot will be refueling SpaceX spacecraft - only. Nobody else uses CH4 as a propellant and that's what will be in the depot.

Seem to recall the Dynetics ALPACA HLS lander does use CH4 as fuel.

And everyone will need LOX.

[Zed_Noir]

Lighting will be a challenge for #Artemis missions to the Moon's South Pole because the Sun is at a low angle. Small boulders or elevation changes can create long shadows on treacherous terrain. Check out the below visualization to see how shadows move over two lunar days.

https://twitter.com/JimFree/status/1610711739645018120

What issues does the lighting condition at the Moon's South Pole cause that Jim Free is tweeting about?

The current HLS lander of record doesn't need visual landmark references to landed.

Traversing the Lunar surface in a vehicle will presumably be assisted by imaging LIDAR and vehicle illumination.

Personnel walking around in EVA suits will not be without adequate illumination. Also possibly thermal imagers installed in the EVA suits.

[Robotbeat]

The SpaceX Depot for HLS ... will probably not be configured to fuel other types of spacecraft. A fuelling operation will require the other ship to implement the SpaceX Depot interface, which will be a whole lot more complicated than just a couple of hoses.

The SpaceX depot will be refueling SpaceX spacecraft - only. Nobody else uses CH4 as a propellant and that's what will be in the depot.

Seem to recall the Dynetics ALPACA HLS lander does use CH4 as fuel.

And everyone will need LOX.

Yup. And Nova-C robotic lander. And Intuitive Machines had previously talked about larger landers, around the size of the Apollo LM, and I think they were to use methane on that, too.

Plus Relativity and Neutron.

[su27k]

The latest news is that they're planning for crewed lunar landing by 2030, source: https://spacenews.com/china-sets-out-clear-and-independent-long-term-vision-for-space/, https://spacenews.com/china-outlines-pathway-for-lunar-and-deep-space-exploration/

You have to be careful with these China space program articles.  The source in the first is “senior Chinese lunar program designer and engineer Ye Peijian” who only stated that “as long as the country is determined, a Chinese crewed moon landing is entirely possible by 2030” and whose “words do not equate to an official statement of China formally approving a crewed lunar landing”.  It’s roughly the equivalent of an Orion manager in 2012 saying that American boots could be on the Moon in 2020 with funding and perserverance.  Neither equates to an actual government decision and funding support for a human lunar landing.  The second article just references the first.

I’d also be careful about Andrew Jones articles.  Last I knew, he reported from Helsinki and is not an in situ observer or on-the-ground reporter of China’s space activities.

China doesn't "officially" announce a lot of their crewed activities in advance, like the date/time of ShenZhou launches or the astronauts flying, but observers like Andrew Jones can get unofficial information from other channels such as airspace closure notices and accurately predict some of these.

https://twitter.com/AJ_FI/status/1597149660879065089

So what if China didn't "officially" announce they're going to the Moon by 2030? They're doing all the preparations and hardware development, they communicate the intent via unofficial channels. They could make the "official" announcement just a day before they launch crew to the Moon, are you only going to recognize they're going to the Moon by then?

And there's nothing wrong with reporting from another country, some of the contributors of this site doesn't live in the US (Alex for example), yet they provide one of the best coverage of SpaceX activities.

[JohnFornaro]

What "economy"? Its all just gonna be government programs ... This takes huge amounts of money. (A) Where does the money come from?
There is a basic issue here:
1. Build depots
2. XXXXXX
3. Profit

What is #2? Tourism? (B) There aren't enough billionaires for that to be profitable much less worthwhile. What else? There is no answer right now. The entire idea rests on the assumption that there is a functioning economy to profit from. However, there IS NO lunar economy. There are no legitimate plans to create one either.

A "magical fuel depot" is something that SpaceX is under contract to build in the next 3 years.  It's really easy to get one from LEO to whatever cislunar orbit you want.

The SpaceX Depot for HLS will fuel the HLS, and possibly other Starship variants. (C) It will probably not be configured to fuel other types of spacecraft. A fuelling operation will require the other ship to implement the SpaceX Depot interface, which will be a whole lot more complicated than just a couple of hoses. It is likely to involve a large and complex hard docking system. For example, SpaceX might dock the Starship to the Depot using the same 9 meter diameter interface used to connect the SS to the SH.

It's "easy" to get a Depot to a cislunar orbit. It's a lot harder to get it back or to get more fuel to it. It will take a whole lot of tanker flights.

(A) Well, Janet Yellen seems to know how to operate the printing press.

(B) Shatner wasn't a billionaire.  The cost of tourist space travel is coming down.  Note that I'm not making any predictions.

(C) One way to reduce the cost of spaceflight is to start standardizing the components.  Just because the SpaceX interface will me more complicated than "a couple of hoses" does not mean that it can't be duplicated.

If our tax dollars are being used properly, we the people would own the re-fueling interface and have the right to visit and use the gas station, following all the necessary protocols.

There are no legitimate plans to create [a cis-lunar economy] either.

If private industry is simply not allowed to use the prop depot then that would confirm your assertion.  They may simply disallow a cis-lunar economy from developing.

[JohnFornaro]

The SpaceX Depot for HLS ... will probably not be configured to fuel other types of spacecraft. A fuelling operation will require the other ship to implement the SpaceX Depot interface, which will be a whole lot more complicated than just a couple of hoses.

The SpaceX depot will be refueling SpaceX spacecraft - only. Nobody else uses CH4 as a propellant and that's what will be in the depot.

Other companies could use CH4.  They could either build their own, or buy them from SpaceX.  Anyway, there should a way to sell regular and premium gas, if you catch my meaning.

[JohnFornaro]

What issues does the lighting condition at the Moon's South Pole cause that Jim Free is tweeting about? ...

Personnel walking around in EVA suits will not be without adequate illumination. Also possibly thermal imagers installed in the EVA suits.

Small boulders or elevation changes can create long shadows on treacherous terrain.

https://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/strategies/human_ex/lighting_constraints.pdf

[yg1968]

Lighting will be a challenge for #Artemis missions to the Moon's South Pole because the Sun is at a low angle. Small boulders or elevation changes can create long shadows on treacherous terrain. Check out the below visualization to see how shadows move over two lunar days.

https://twitter.com/JimFree/status/1610711739645018120

What issues does the lighting condition at the Moon's South Pole cause that Jim Free is tweeting about?

The current HLS lander of record doesn't need visual landmark references to landed.

Traversing the Lunar surface in a vehicle will presumably be assisted by imaging LIDAR and vehicle illumination.

Personnel walking around in EVA suits will not be without adequate illumination. Also possibly thermal imagers installed in the EVA suits.

They will be using solar power.

[clongton]

The SpaceX Depot for HLS ... will probably not be configured to fuel other types of spacecraft. A fuelling operation will require the other ship to implement the SpaceX Depot interface, which will be a whole lot more complicated than just a couple of hoses.

The SpaceX depot will be refueling SpaceX spacecraft - only. Nobody else uses CH4 as a propellant and that's what will be in the depot.

Other companies could use CH4.  They could either build their own, or buy them from SpaceX.  Anyway, there should a way to sell regular and premium gas, if you catch my meaning.

Optium word John is "could". So far no one else is flying vehicles that need refilling that use CH4. There are proposals, nothing more. SpaceX Starship is the only vehicle that needs on-orbit refueling that uses CH4. It hasn't orbited yet, but it has test flown, so it's not a paper rocket, but a real one. So far it's the only one.

[VSECOTSPE]

China doesn't "officially" announce a lot of their crewed activities in advance, like the date/time of ShenZhou launches or the astronauts flying

Oh sure, but China announces new programs, as part of Five-Year Plans or elsewhere.  We may not know when a Tiangong mission is going up, but we knew there was a Tiangong space station program long before the first element launched.

So what if China didn't "officially" announce they're going to the Moon by 2030?

We’d still know an effort was underway from commercial remote sensing imagery and other open source info.  That size of hardware and testing couldn’t be hidden during the Apollo era.  It really can’t be hidden today.

[Paul451]

ILRS timeline has construction of robotic infrastructure starting NET 2026. With infrastructure capable of supporting future manned missions added between 2031 and 2035, to allow manned missions starting NET 2036.

The latest news is that they're planning for crewed lunar landing by 2030,

[Emphasis mine]

Wrong. Click through and that's not what article says. It was a conference presentation by one of their engineers (and program manager of the Chang'e robotic landers) that they could land two taikonauts for 6hrs (ie, for a one-off stunt) by 2030 if they cared to, and if they accelerated their development program.

But neither of those things are the case. They don't care to, and they aren't accelerating the program. And they'd still most likely lose the "race" to NASA, while diverting resources from their long term development.

It was the equivalent of Lunar Gemini proposals in the '60s. Or the Starship-only Artemis proposals that occasionally get floated here (and in the actual thread intended for it.)

[Edit: Removed the bolding on my own quoted-quoted comment, to make clearer what "emphasis mine" I emphasised.]

[Paul451]

Lighting will be a challenge for #Artemis missions

[...] Also possibly thermal imagers installed in the EVA suits.

And what exactly would the thermal imagers see? Think about it. What's the heat source? Hence, what would the image show?

[Zed_Noir]

Lighting will be a challenge for #Artemis missions

[...] Also possibly thermal imagers installed in the EVA suits.

And what exactly would the thermal imagers see? Think about it. What's the heat source? Hence, what would the image show?

The difference in temperature of different materials. Small objects will loss heat faster than large objects. The inverse is small objects heat up faster than large objects.

Also implied is limited illumination by microwave sources. At least for nearby range of a few dozen meters. Somewhat like the Xenon projectors on some armoured fighting vehicles to illuminated targets in the midst of counter imaging aerosol clouds.

[TheRadicalModerate]

Woah, where did you get the idea that the U.S. military is concerned about cislunar space? As far as we know in the public, the military is only concerned with deploying assets that watch the Earth, or maybe watch other space assets that are in orbit of Earth, but its been long proven that deploying military assets to the region of the Moon is useless when it comes to protecting American interests here on Earth.

General Atomics selected to build satellite for AFRL cislunar mission.

“The AFRL Oracle spacecraft program is intended to demonstrate advanced techniques to detect and track objects in the region near the Moon that cannot be viewed optically from the Earth or from satellites in traditional orbits,” he said in a statement.

GA-EMS is also developing the DRACO NTP system for DARPA, an acronym for Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations.

The space domain is essential to modern commerce, scientific discovery, and national defense. Maintaining space domain awareness in cislunar space – the volume of space between the Earth and the Moon – will require a leap-ahead in propulsion technology.

Both of these contracts are fairly small potatoes right now.  But they don't spend money on stuff that doesn't concern them.

This is an area where major powers are going to have to match each other's capabilities.  I doubt there are military surface applications, but stuff in cislunar orbits have a lot of potential energy.

You are just making up stuff now, and no, there is no "military space race" that needs to go to the surface of the Moon.

Not only is that not what I said in the bulk of the post, it's not even what I said in the part that you quoted.

I just don't understand how people can think this, when it will be the U.S. that will have the least expensive, and most capable, space transportation system soon - the SpaceX Starship. If we really felt the need to have a large presence on the Moon (separate from the Artemis program), assuming the Starship system work China would not be able to beat our ability to land mass and on the Moon. Assuming there was a need - which there isn't.

Exactly how long do you think it will be before China has a Starship-like knockoff?  Ten years?  I'd be surprised if it takes fifteen years.  After all, the Chinese can recognize a national security problem when they see it--just like the US can.

This isn't (pardon me) rocket science.  Time and time again, when a great power aims to develop a capability that confers a strategic or economic advantage over their rival, it's countered with an attempt to match the capability.  It's why there are arms races.

Arms races don't end until somebody's willing to recognize that an advantage can't be acquired, and negotiating limits is in both sides' interest.  Since neither the US nor China believe that they can't get an advantage yet, both sides will keep developing capabilities.

[Eric Hedman]

Woah, where did you get the idea that the U.S. military is concerned about cislunar space? As far as we know in the public, the military is only concerned with deploying assets that watch the Earth, or maybe watch other space assets that are in orbit of Earth, but its been long proven that deploying military assets to the region of the Moon is useless when it comes to protecting American interests here on Earth.

General Atomics selected to build satellite for AFRL cislunar mission.

“The AFRL Oracle spacecraft program is intended to demonstrate advanced techniques to detect and track objects in the region near the Moon that cannot be viewed optically from the Earth or from satellites in traditional orbits,” he said in a statement.

GA-EMS is also developing the DRACO NTP system for DARPA, an acronym for Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations.

The space domain is essential to modern commerce, scientific discovery, and national defense. Maintaining space domain awareness in cislunar space – the volume of space between the Earth and the Moon – will require a leap-ahead in propulsion technology.

Both of these contracts are fairly small potatoes right now.  But they don't spend money on stuff that doesn't concern them.

This is an area where major powers are going to have to match each other's capabilities.  I doubt there are military surface applications, but stuff in cislunar orbits have a lot of potential energy.

You are just making up stuff now, and no, there is no "military space race" that needs to go to the surface of the Moon.

Not only is that not what I said in the bulk of the post, it's not even what I said in the part that you quoted.

I just don't understand how people can think this, when it will be the U.S. that will have the least expensive, and most capable, space transportation system soon - the SpaceX Starship. If we really felt the need to have a large presence on the Moon (separate from the Artemis program), assuming the Starship system work China would not be able to beat our ability to land mass and on the Moon. Assuming there was a need - which there isn't.

Exactly how long do you think it will be before China has a Starship-like knockoff?  Ten years?  I'd be surprised if it takes fifteen years.  After all, the Chinese can recognize a national security problem when they see it--just like the US can.

This isn't (pardon me) rocket science.  Time and time again, when a great power aims to develop a capability that confers a strategic or economic advantage over their rival, it's countered with an attempt to match the capability.  It's why there are arms races.

Arms races don't end until somebody's willing to recognize that an advantage can't be acquired, and negotiating limits is in both sides' interest.  Since neither the US nor China believe that they can't get an advantage yet, both sides will keep developing capabilities.

The US Space Force just stood up the 19th Space Defense Squadron in Dahlgren, Virginia, to focus on cis-lunar domain awareness.  Cis-lunar space is quickly becoming the high ground in military interest.

https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2022/04/20/us-space-force-space-defense-squadron-tasked-to-focus-on-deep-space/

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

Is there a thread for cis-lunar domain awareness? If not I think we may need one soon. Else that discussion will continue to spill over onto other cis-lunar activity threads.

[deadman1204]

Is there a thread for cis-lunar domain awareness? If not I think we may need one soon. Else that discussion will continue to spill over onto other cis-lunar activity threads.

awareness of what? Isn't the concept just an attempt to sell stuff to congress?There is nothing on the moon, and like 3 science missions around it.

[JayWee]

Is there a thread for cis-lunar domain awareness? If not I think we may need one soon. Else that discussion will continue to spill over onto other cis-lunar activity threads.

awareness of what? Isn't the concept just an attempt to sell stuff to congress?There is nothing on the moon, and like 3 science missions around it.

It's a real issue: https://warontherocks.com/2022/07/dont-delay-getting-serious-about-cislunar-security/

[JohnFornaro]

Well then.  Let that be a lesson to us all on how situational awareness has grown.  Those amateurs are getting pretty good!  Disappointing as always to read of China's opaque PAO.