HLS Option B and the Sustaining Lunar Development Phase (Appendix P)

[clongton]

Accordingly, it's critical for them to keep NASA happy. They seem to understand that quite well. Everyone else should too.

Not for funding anymore, but definitely for continued access to narrow but deep expertise in a number of domains.  That’s where SpaceX still can’t do without NASA.

To be sure, there are several specific areas where NASA has or oversees expertise in areas SpaceX will need in its plans to go to Mars, but does not itself possess. Among these are:

1. Deep Space Experience and Legacy: NASA has decades of experience in deep space exploration, including missions to Mars (such as the Mars rovers and orbiters) and beyond (like the Voyager probes). This depth of experience provides a robust foundation in understanding the challenges of interplanetary missions, including long-duration spaceflight, radiation exposure, planetary entry, descent, and landing. SpaceX’s expertise to date is limited to LEO and vicinity, well below its lofty goals.

2. Scientific Expertise: NASA has a vast network of scientists and researchers specializing in planetary science, astrobiology, geology, and other disciplines relevant to Mars exploration. This scientific expertise is crucial for understanding the Martian environment, potential for past or present life, and conducting meaningful experiments and analyses. This knowledge/brain trust is crucial to SpaceX’s ultimate goal of making humanity a multi-planetary species. Unlike point 1 above, in which SpaceX has at least some experience, the company has zero expertise in this area. SpaceX will need to heavily tap into this network if they are to have any chance of moving beyond simply landing on Mars and creating and operating a small human-tended outpost.

I have no doubt that SpaceX is able to reach and land on Mars pretty much on its own. It might even take a few EDL failures, which the company has rolled into its SOPs for robust and rapid development, but it will ultimately succeed, without NASA’s help if necessary. But that’s a lot of unnecessary pain to finance and endure. SpaceX would do well to draw on the knowledge base that NASA can provide in that area.

As for the scientific expertise, that is an area that is crucial to SpaceX being able to get beyond a flag and footprint accomplishment on the Martian surface. The company will absolutely need to tap into this knowledge base and the scientific experts who are the keepers of this knowledge. It would be well advised to begin this process yesterday, even to the point of establishing a functioning division of the company to gather this knowledge (and personnel) and arrange it within the scope of its specific plans to develop a permanent colony on the surface of Mars.

Beyond this there are many other areas where NASA can truly be of genuine assistance to the goals that SpaceX has, but which the company is ultimately capable, or could become capable, of developing on its own.

The problem with using NASA as a funding center for its goals is that USGov funding is sketchy at best, usually come with a lot of distracting strings attached and is totally unpredictable as administrations and congressional memberships change over the years, altering the funding profiles along the way. NASA funding, while directed at space exploration, is not really funding FOR space exploration. It is political funding, geared to obtaining and hanging onto political power among the ever changing faces of whomever wields that power. SpaceX, on the other hand, is well on its way to becoming a trillion dollar company, and its funding profile, unlike NASA's, is totally directed to its specific goals of space exploration.

That is why I feel justified in my assertion that SpaceX will succeed, with or without NASA, in getting to Mars. The Artemis program to reach the moon, the subject of this specific thread, is not something that SpaceX ever intended to do. The Starship program was started well before Artemis even existed. But Elon is no fool and quickly recognized a path to stretching out his own funding of Starship by bidding on, and then obtaining a moon landing capability for NASA, by supplementing his own funding with NASA dollars. Prior to this, Elon had said several times that lunar programs were not on his radar, and while possible, was not something he was interested in pursuing. But by performing on the Artemis contract, SpaceX found an opportunity to tap into additional funding to help along the SpaceX Mars goals using Starship. Participating in Artemis was a purely business decision on Elon's part.

To illustrate this point, consider the fact that Starship EDL is designed to land after transiting an atmosphere. Why would anyone design a spacecraft designed for atmospheric entry to use on a one-way trip strictly to land on a vacuum world like the moon? Why use stainless steel instead of less expensive and much lighter aluminum? And the Mars lander won't have any chopsticks on a tower to catch it upon landing. SpaceX will need to develop landing legs that collapse inside the hull for storage in the stowed position. Might as well let NASA pay for that development. Starship isn't designed for the moon, but by developing a variant for the moon along the way, the Mars Starship will benefit at government expense.
Yup, a pure business decision, totally unrelated to the moon.

[JohnFornaro]

So many keep forgetting that SpaceX is going to Mars - with or without NASA.

I don't think it's an issue of people forgetting anything. It's just that most people don't believe it. I certainly don't. ... 

Without NASA, without American taxpayer dollars, SpaceX isn't even getting to the moon--much less Mars. Accordingly, it's critical for them to keep NASA happy. They seem to understand that quite well. Everyone else should too.

Well, hope is eternal.  I continue to subscribe to the "Build it and they will come" notion.  True, SpaceX and whoever else will have to front massive capital to build sufficient infrastructure up there.

I have a bit of a quibble with the wording of your comment "without American taxpayer dollars", which sounds like SpaceX is getting something for nothing.  SpaceX is bidding on, and winning contracts, not handouts.  Elon is free to spend his profits on building a ring station at EML-1, just to pick a destination/project completely at random.  Over time, an off world economy will develop, with tourism as being the first non-governmental source of funding.  How long will this take is a good question.

[JohnFornaro]

Until SpaceX demonstrates performance consist Artemis will get to draft off of SpaceX's Mars development a bit, and Mars will get to draft off of Artemis's development, but by and large, they have nothing to do with one another.

Including launching crew and cargo from the surface of the Earth?  These "nothing to do with one another" comments bother me, since there is so much obvious commonality between the two efforts.  The quantitative and qualitative difference between the two efforts is distance, mostly.

[JohnFornaro]

There’s just too much money to be made from Starlink to turn off Starship...

Bingo.  And as I pointed out to RadMod above, Elon is free to use his profits as he sees fit.

[JohnFornaro]

...Waiting until the last possible moment in each annual budget cycle to kick the can down the road another year...

Appears to be the intentional strategy.

[JohnFornaro]

SpaceX being able to get beyond a flag and footprint accomplishment on the Martian surface.

This is the beginning of exploration, colonization, and the development of an off-world economy.

That is why I feel justified in my assertion that SpaceX will succeed, with or without NASA, in getting to Mars.

I agree in principle.  However, it is imperative that we not start WWIII in the meantime.

Elon had said several times that lunar programs were not on his radar, and while possible, was not something he was interested in pursuing.

I like to pretend that Elon followed my advice; use the Moon as the nearby testing ground for his Martian goals.

[TheRadicalModerate]

Without NASA, without American taxpayer dollars, SpaceX isn't even getting to the moon--much less Mars. Accordingly, it's critical for them to keep NASA happy. They seem to understand that quite well. Everyone else should too.

NASA is conservative.  Until they know that Starship HLS is going to work, they're not going to start writing requirements that only it can do.

NASA was not "conservative" when it awarded SpaceX the (then) only HLS Option B contract. So yes, NASA will take risks, and yes, NASA will sole source critical systems.

Except they then went out and got a second source.¹  They're not going to write any task orders that the second source can't fulfill unless the capabilities have been demonstrated, or at least until there's performance data indicating that the capability is highly likely to exist.

Until SpaceX demonstrates performance consistent with 30t+ payloads, NASA's not going to write any task orders for them...

No, I disagree. The primary focus of the current Artemis mission, per V.P. Pence when they announced the program, is:

“To be clear: the first woman and the next man on the moon will both be American astronauts, launched by American rockets from American soil.”

First, by "current Artemis mission", do you mean Arty 3, or Artemis in general?  Because the rationale for Artemis in general is laid out in SPD-1:

“Lead an innovative and sustainable program of exploration with commercial and international partners to enable human expansion across the Solar System and to bring back to Earth new knowledge and opportunities. Beginning with missions beyond low-Earth orbit, the United States will lead the return of humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilization, followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations.”

Emphasis mine.

Second, unless you're arguing that Artemis is a fool's errand and is going to wither away after a couple of PR stunts (a defensible argument), this is a non sequitur.  I'm arguing that NASA won't write sole-source task orders (especially orders for equipment that nobody is developing) without really good reasons for doing so, and high confidence that the source can deliver.


_______________
¹There were obviously lots of politics about this.  But at the end of the day, NASA has a two-source HLS program.  It's dumb to build payloads that only one of the sources can handle.  That may change as NASA gets more and more confident in the HDL Starship's ability to land tonnage, but... they're going to be conservative.

[DanClemmensen]

Without NASA, without American taxpayer dollars, SpaceX isn't even getting to the moon--much less Mars. Accordingly, it's critical for them to keep NASA happy. They seem to understand that quite well. Everyone else should too.

NASA is conservative.  Until they know that Starship HLS is going to work, they're not going to start writing requirements that only it can do.

NASA was not "conservative" when it awarded SpaceX the (then) only HLS Option B contract. So yes, NASA will take risks, and yes, NASA will sole source critical systems.

Except they then went out and got a second source.  They're not going to write any task orders that the second source can't fulfill unless the capabilities have been demonstrated, or at least until there's performance data indicating that the capability is highly likely to exist.

Sadly, as a practical matter NASA has no need for a larger payload than the smaller of the two HLS payload capacities until they have a way to send more than four crew to the lunar surface to make use of it.

[TheRadicalModerate]

Until SpaceX demonstrates performance consist Artemis will get to draft off of SpaceX's Mars development a bit, and Mars will get to draft off of Artemis's development, but by and large, they have nothing to do with one another.

Including launching crew and cargo from the surface of the Earth?  These "nothing to do with one another" comments bother me, since there is so much obvious commonality between the two efforts.  The quantitative and qualitative difference between the two efforts is distance, mostly.

First, you mangled the quote via a cut-and-paste error.  (I was relieved to discover that I hadn't mangled it, which is always more than a possibility.)

Second, Artemis doesn't require the HLS Starship to launch crew from the surface of the Earth, and launching HDL cargo is considerably easier, because it doesn't require crew-certifying Starship, and it doesn't require returning the Starship to Earth, if that's awkward or expensive.

So it's pretty close to "nothing to do with one another".  I'm not arguing that Starship variants have nothing to do with one another, but I am saying that, from a program management standpoint, there's not much overlap.  Not zero, but not much.

[TheRadicalModerate]

Sadly, as a practical matter NASA has no need for a larger payload than the smaller of the two HLS payload capacities until they have a way to send more than four crew to the lunar surface to make use of it.

That's completely true, and, yeah, it's kinda sad.

But the reason that I wrote the whole "NASA is conservative" thing, is because it contains the seeds for un-sadding the situation.  When NASA is certain that they can drop 30t-60t on the surface for roughly the same price that they'll be paying for ~20t task orders, they'll start assuming that capability exists, and they'll build the architecture around it.  It won't happen until HDL Starships look insanely reliable, though.  Hopefully, by the time that happens, the penny will have dropped at Blue that they need to keep up.

[JohnFornaro]

Until SpaceX demonstrates performance consist Artemis will get to draft off of SpaceX's Mars development a bit, and Mars will get to draft off of Artemis's development, but by and large, they have nothing to do with one another.

Including launching crew and cargo from the surface of the Earth?  These "nothing to do with one another" comments bother me, since there is so much obvious commonality between the two efforts.  The quantitative and qualitative difference between the two efforts is distance, mostly.

1) First, you mangled the quote via a cut-and-paste error.  (I was relieved to discover that I hadn't mangled it, which is always more than a possibility.)

2) Second, Artemis doesn't require the HLS Starship to launch crew from the surface of the Earth, and launching HDL cargo is considerably easier, because it doesn't require crew-certifying Starship, and it doesn't require returning the Starship to Earth, if that's awkward or expensive.

3) So it's pretty close to "nothing to do with one another".  I'm not arguing that Starship variants have nothing to do with one another, but I am saying that, from a program management standpoint, there's not much overlap.  Not zero, but not much.

1) I'm not getting the 'cut'n'paste' error you mention. I believe I was accurate.

2) I didn't mention HLS. All of these programs depend upon launching crew & cargo from the Earth's surface.  Unless I'm mistaken, Starship will be launching C&C from the Earth's surface.  I'm not getting your objection, other than I may not have used the acronym of current usage.

3) "Program management" is subservient to the necessities of launching C&C from the Earth's surface to whereever.  What is this insistance that acronym usage is more important than the pragmatic programmatic exigencies?

[TheRadicalModerate]

2) I didn't mention HLS. All of these programs depend upon launching crew & cargo from the Earth's surface.  Unless I'm mistaken, Starship will be launching C&C from the Earth's surface.  I'm not getting your objection, other than I may not have used the acronym of current usage.

Then I don't understand what your point was.  My point was that what SpaceX is doing for NASA on Artemis and what they're doing on their own for Mars are relatively disjoint programs.

I thought you were arguing that the need to launch crew directly from Earth to the lunar surface (presumably with no SLS/Orion or even an F9/D2 involved) somehow made what they're doing for Mars dependent on what they did for Artemis.  If that's not the point, then I don't understand how anything that has to do with launch impacts how Artemis and Mars are joined together.

Whatever SpaceX is doing for Mars does need at least crew EDL out of Starship, which likely implies crew launch as well.  But even if that suddenly was up and running, it's not clear it would be useful for Artemis, because the landing regimes are pretty different:  HLS needs the relatively weak waist thrusters to keep from blowing debris into suborbit and even orbit.  How those thrusters can be made compatible with the TPS system (which is essential for Mars but not for the Moon) remains to be seen.

"Program management" is subservient to the necessities of launching C&C from the Earth's surface to whereever.  What is this insistance that acronym usage is more important than the pragmatic programmatic exigencies?

Program management is how you get big engineering projects to do what they're supposed to.  Even SpaceX has program management.  That's how SpaceX figures out how many resources to devote to Artemis vs. Mars.  I suspect that they're heavily skewed toward the former right now.

[Paul451]

1) I'm not getting the 'cut'n'paste' error you mention. I believe I was accurate.

What TRM wrote:

Until SpaceX demonstrates performance consistent with 30t+ payloads, NASA's not going to [...]
[bunch of other stuff deleted - Paul]
As for Mars, it's not completely orthogonal to Artemis, but it's pretty close.  Artemis will get to draft off of SpaceX's Mars development a bit, and Mars will get to draft off of Artemis's development, but by and large, they have nothing to do with one another.

What you quoted:

Until SpaceX demonstrates performance consist Artemis will get to draft off of SpaceX's Mars development a bit, and Mars will get to draft off of Artemis's development, but by and large, they have nothing to do with one another.

[JohnFornaro]

Then I don't understand what your point was.  My point was that what SpaceX is doing for NASA on Artemis and what they're doing on their own for Mars are relatively disjoint programs.

My objection was to the "nothing to do with one another" comment.  I simply raised the obvious point that all of these programs have the same starting point: the Earth's surface, followed by a launch to LEO, EML-1, Shackelton, yada yada. All the programs require management, budgets, funding, personell, and so forth. 

The commonalities can be used to create synergy. The "nothing to do with one another" mindset encourages strife, mis-communication, and a host of negative energy, none of which enables mission accomplishment.

Why don't you knock it off with all those negative waves so early in the morning...

[JohnFornaro]

1) I'm not getting the 'cut'n'paste' error you mention. ...

What TRM wrote:

Until SpaceX demonstrates performance consistent with 30t+ payloads, NASA's not going to [...]
[bunch of other stuff deleted - Paul]
As for Mars, it's not completely orthogonal to Artemis, but it's pretty close.  Artemis will get to draft off of SpaceX's Mars development a bit, and Mars will get to draft off of Artemis's development, but by and large, they have nothing to do with one another.

What you quoted:

Until SpaceX demonstrates performance consist Artemis will get to draft off of SpaceX's Mars development a bit, and Mars will get to draft off of Artemis's development, but by and large, they have nothing to do with one another.

Hah.  I see.  What I should have written:

Until SpaceX demonstrates performance ... [edit: remove the word "consist" and replace with elipsis ... ] Artemis will get to draft off of SpaceX's Mars development a bit, and Mars will get to draft off of Artemis's development, but by and large, they have nothing to do with one another.

A pet peeve of mine is these huge walls of requoted comments.  I make the effort to keep the meaning of the comment while parsing out the unecessary [IMO] content.  In htis case, my editing process was not careful enough.

I also realize that he said "by and large".

Mea culpa.

[TheRadicalModerate]

Hah.  I see.  What I should have written:

Until SpaceX demonstrates performance ... [edit: remove the word "consist" and replace with elipsis ... ] Artemis will get to draft off of SpaceX's Mars development a bit, and Mars will get to draft off of Artemis's development, but by and large, they have nothing to do with one another.

A pet peeve of mine is these huge walls of requoted comments.  I make the effort to keep the meaning of the comment while parsing out the unecessary [IMO] content.  In htis case, my editing process was not careful enough.

I also realize that he said "by and large".

Mea culpa.

That changes it from incomprehensible to merely misleading.  I had two points:

1) NASA will use heavier load-outs on HLS Starship when they're sure it works.

2) The synergies between Artemis and Mars are small.

You glued them together into one different point.  If you're going to elide text, it's best if you don't change its meaning.

My objection was to the "nothing to do with one another" comment.  I simply raised the obvious point that all of these programs have the same starting point: the Earth's surface, followed by a launch to LEO, EML-1, Shackelton, yada yada. All the programs require management, budgets, funding, personell, and so forth. 

The commonalities can be used to create synergy. The "nothing to do with one another" mindset encourages strife, mis-communication, and a host of negative energy, none of which enables mission accomplishment.

Obviously everything to do with space begins with launch.  It's a pretty specious argument to use that as the reason why synergies exist.  It's like saying saying that there are synergies between the development of a blast furnace and an automobile, because they both involve combustion.

It's great to wave your arms a say that all these various efforts create a virtuous cycle, and that's true--to a point.  But when you're doing real engineering, you need people, money, and equipment.  Very few of those resources will funge easily between Artemis and Mars work.

[JohnFornaro]

I had two points

And I wasn't addressing those points.

It's like saying saying that there are synergies between the development of a blast furnace and an automobile, because they both involve combustion.

Analogize much?

It's like saying saying that there are synergies between the development of a steel blast furnace and a copper blast furnace, since they both need a supply of ore and electricity.

[Coastal Ron]

Without NASA, without American taxpayer dollars, SpaceX isn't even getting to the moon--much less Mars. Accordingly, it's critical for them to keep NASA happy. They seem to understand that quite well. Everyone else should too.

NASA is conservative.  Until they know that Starship HLS is going to work, they're not going to start writing requirements that only it can do.

NASA was not "conservative" when it awarded SpaceX the (then) only HLS Option B contract. So yes, NASA will take risks, and yes, NASA will sole source critical systems.

Except they then went out and got a second source.¹

They didn't award a second source when they chose SpacerX as the (then) sole source, because Blue Origin at that point had a number of issues that didn't make it a second choice. It was only after pressure from Congress, and time, that Blue Origin finally proposed something that mets the needs of the program, was a solid enough proposal to believe, and was offered at a price that fit NASA's budget.

In other words, for a two year period NASA was relying solely on SpaceX, and had no idea that a viable second source would be come forward.

Second, unless you're arguing that Artemis is a fool's errand and is going to wither away after a couple of PR stunts (a defensible argument), this is a non sequitur.  I'm arguing that NASA won't write sole-source task orders (especially orders for equipment that nobody is developing) without really good reasons for doing so, and high confidence that the source can deliver.

It is important to remember that NASA works for the President, and is funded by Congress. NASA has little ability to do things on its own. So if Congress funds NASA to do something sole sourced, like they did with the SLS and Orion MPCV, then NASA will salute and do that.

And just to emphasis this even more, Congress doesn't really care if NASA has to rely on sole sourced solutions, as the SLS and Orion MPCV program demonstrate quite clearly. Both of those programs are way over budget and far behind any optimistic development schedule, and Congress has shown little interest in either of those metrics.

So it is not NASA per se that determines its overall risk, it is Congress too.

[deadman1204]

Without NASA, without American taxpayer dollars, SpaceX isn't even getting to the moon--much less Mars. Accordingly, it's critical for them to keep NASA happy. They seem to understand that quite well. Everyone else should too.

NASA is conservative.  Until they know that Starship HLS is going to work, they're not going to start writing requirements that only it can do.

NASA was not "conservative" when it awarded SpaceX the (then) only HLS Option B contract. So yes, NASA will take risks, and yes, NASA will sole source critical systems.

Except they then went out and got a second source.¹

They didn't award a second source when they chose SpacerX as the (then) sole source, because Blue Origin at that point had a number of issues that didn't make it a second choice. It was only after pressure from Congress, and time, that Blue Origin finally proposed something that mets the needs of the program, was a solid enough proposal to believe, and was offered at a price that fit NASA's budget.

In other words, for a two year period NASA was relying solely on SpaceX, and had no idea that a viable second source would be come forward.

Second, unless you're arguing that Artemis is a fool's errand and is going to wither away after a couple of PR stunts (a defensible argument), this is a non sequitur.  I'm arguing that NASA won't write sole-source task orders (especially orders for equipment that nobody is developing) without really good reasons for doing so, and high confidence that the source can deliver.

It is important to remember that NASA works for the President, and is funded by Congress. NASA has little ability to do things on its own. So if Congress funds NASA to do something sole sourced, like they did with the SLS and Orion MPCV, then NASA will salute and do that.

And just to emphasis this even more, Congress doesn't really care if NASA has to rely on sole sourced solutions, as the SLS and Orion MPCV program demonstrate quite clearly. Both of those programs are way over budget and far behind any optimistic development schedule, and Congress has shown little interest in either of those metrics.

So it is not NASA per se that determines its overall risk, it is Congress too.

Its a little revisionist history here. Part of the reason spacex won is because of cost, it was the only proposal nasa could afford. Blue had to buy enough politicians to have their winning bid written into law.
Thats not to say spaceX's bid was bad. However if spaceX had bid the same price as blue did, I bet no one would have been chosen.

[yg1968]

Without NASA, without American taxpayer dollars, SpaceX isn't even getting to the moon--much less Mars. Accordingly, it's critical for them to keep NASA happy. They seem to understand that quite well. Everyone else should too.

NASA is conservative.  Until they know that Starship HLS is going to work, they're not going to start writing requirements that only it can do.

NASA was not "conservative" when it awarded SpaceX the (then) only HLS Option B contract. So yes, NASA will take risks, and yes, NASA will sole source critical systems.

Except they then went out and got a second source.¹

They didn't award a second source when they chose SpacerX as the (then) sole source, because Blue Origin at that point had a number of issues that didn't make it a second choice. It was only after pressure from Congress, and time, that Blue Origin finally proposed something that mets the needs of the program, was a solid enough proposal to believe, and was offered at a price that fit NASA's budget.

In other words, for a two year period NASA was relying solely on SpaceX, and had no idea that a viable second source would be come forward.

Second, unless you're arguing that Artemis is a fool's errand and is going to wither away after a couple of PR stunts (a defensible argument), this is a non sequitur.  I'm arguing that NASA won't write sole-source task orders (especially orders for equipment that nobody is developing) without really good reasons for doing so, and high confidence that the source can deliver.

It is important to remember that NASA works for the President, and is funded by Congress. NASA has little ability to do things on its own. So if Congress funds NASA to do something sole sourced, like they did with the SLS and Orion MPCV, then NASA will salute and do that.

And just to emphasis this even more, Congress doesn't really care if NASA has to rely on sole sourced solutions, as the SLS and Orion MPCV program demonstrate quite clearly. Both of those programs are way over budget and far behind any optimistic development schedule, and Congress has shown little interest in either of those metrics.

So it is not NASA per se that determines its overall risk, it is Congress too.

Its a little revisionist history here. Part of the reason spacex won is because of cost, it was the only proposal nasa could afford. Blue had to buy enough politicians to have their winning bid written into law.
Thats not to say spaceX's bid was bad. However if spaceX had bid the same price as blue did, I bet no one would have been chosen.

That is not what happened. First, SpaceX won because it had the best proposal by far. Blue was a distant second since it proposed a 2 person lander that was difficult to upgrade that would have cost NASA close to $6B.

Second, Senator Cantwell proposed funding for a second lander in the NASA Authorization bill but that amendment was not approved partly because of the opposition of Bernie Sanders and partly because similar language had already made it in the explanatory statement to the Appropriations bill which made it unnecessary. However, NASA had already proposed a second lander as part of its LETS program (which later became Appendix P). So NASA wanted a second HLS provider from the outset and Nelson was always up front about that. The main reasons that NASA did not make two awards during Option A is that there wasn't enough funding for two awards and that there was only one good proposal.