Falcon Heavy will launch the Power and Propulsion Element and Habitation and Logistics outpost for the lunar gateway in 2024 in a single launch. https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/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.About one-sixth the size of the International Space Station, the Gateway will function as a way station, located tens of thousands of miles at its farthest distance from the lunar surface, in a near-rectilinear halo orbit. It will serve as a rendezvous point for Artemis astronauts traveling to lunar orbit aboard Orion prior to transit to low-lunar orbit and the surface of the Moon. From this vantage, NASA and its international and commercial partners will conduct unprecedented deep space science and technology investigations.NASA’s Launch Services Program at Kennedy will manage the SpaceX launch service. The HALO is being designed and built by Northrop Grumman Space Systems of Dulles, Virginia, and the PPE is being built by Maxar Technologies of Westminster, Colorado. NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston manages the Gateway program for the agency. NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland is responsible for management of the PPE.Learn more about NASA’s Gateway program at:https://nasa.gov/gateway Learn more about NASA’s Artemis program at: https://www.nasa.gov/artemis
Would this be an extended fairing flight? Do they need to vertically integrate this at the pad?
If the stack is only 15t, and FH can do ~20+t to TLI - I'm not sure that this needs to be a fully expendable launch. The center core, yes, but the boosters could perhaps be recovered down-range.
The total cost to NASA is approximately $331.8 million, including the launch service and other mission-related costs.
Welp.https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/963076231921938432
Since everyone feels a need to quote 3 year old tweets I'm assuming someone checked whether the numbers were ever updated since then?
Why such a high price?Quote from: the press releaseThe total cost to NASA is approximately $331.8 million, including the launch service and other mission-related costs.
Quote from: yg1968 on 02/09/2021 11:07 pmWhy such a high price?Quote from: the press releaseThe total cost to NASA is approximately $331.8 million, including the launch service and other mission-related costs.USSF-67 was $316 million for a 2022 launch. PPE/HALO is $333 million for a 2024 launch. Seems like a trend, maybe. Some of it is launch support, the new fairing, the support tower, etc., but Falcon Heavy itself doesn't appear to be getting cheaper. - Ed Kyle