Starship Artemis Contract & Lunar Starship

[InterestedEngineer]

"When you get to the end zone, try to act as if you've been there before".

Apply that to the alleged current "moon race" with China.

The race is silly and promotes using out of date tech.  The new tech will be ready when it's ready.

[DanClemmensen]

C'mon. Where exactly is the SpaceX lead of 2-4 years? New Glen 7x2 is de facto finished product.

@ JIS, In your opinion, when will NG launch for the fourth time? All modern LVs have taken about two years. (Except Starship, which is too weird.)
Why do you think NG will do any better? Note that BO does not consider it to be a finished product. They have announced important changes even for NG-3.

[321]

"When you get to the end zone, try to act as if you've been there before".

Apply that to the alleged current "moon race" with China.

The race is silly and promotes using out of date tech.  The new tech will be ready when it's ready.

Aren't delays on SX HLS caused because they moon proposal is low priority offshoot of the Mars plans?
 

[greybeardengineer]

Aren't delays on SX HLS caused because they moon proposal is low priority offshoot of the Mars plans?

No. Starship development is still well in the common elements phase (starship recovery and reuse, LEO docking and propellant transfer, operation flow optimization) for commercial launch, Mars, and Artemis. There is a concurrent development effort for the HLS lander but it doesn't appear to be on the Artemis critical path or starved for resources.

[DanClemmensen]

"When you get to the end zone, try to act as if you've been there before".

Apply that to the alleged current "moon race" with China.

The race is silly and promotes using out of date tech.  The new tech will be ready when it's ready.

Aren't delays on SX HLS caused because they moon proposal is low priority offshoot of the Mars plans?

Possibly, but not likely. The Starship HLS contract requires SpaceX to develop and perfect three types of Starship and the procedures for using them. The three are Depot, Tanker, and the HLS itself. The procedures include rapid build and launch and Booster recovery and reuse and in-orbit refilling. Everything in this contract except for the HLS itself is critically important for SpaceX' Mars plans. Actual design and construction of the HLS itself is a very small part of the contract. It is probably not on the critical path, and much of the design derives directly from the design of teh other Ships. It is being developed in parallel with all that other stuff, probably by a separate group of engineers within the overall Starship effort.

[TheRadicalModerate]

Also, if the ballast is greater than the payload mass, it takes away less of the overall energy when released. If the ballast is 10 times the payload mass, the ballast is carrying away only one tenth as much kinetic energy as the payload.

If the target is L1, launch from the middle of far side with two equal loads going opposite directions having apalune at L1. Velocity would be low enough to allow a cheap plane change into a halo orbit. And being equal loads it avoids the issue that Hertz my brain.

More seriously, is there a solution that launches unequal loads from a pole that approach L1 at low V? One going direct and one going around farside and needing little enough correction to be worthwhile.

The trick to all mass-driver schemes (spinner, railgun, etc.) is to allow the payload to be completely inert.  That requires that the rendezvous speed at the "catcher" to be low enough to make the catcher feasible with only a small amount of delta-v to offset the momentum transfer.  (Delta-v is also required to move the catcher around in a trajectory that compensates for all of those 2nd-order lunar motions we need to consider.)

A question I haven't been able to answer is whether such a trajectory (launch at high speed, get caught with ~0 relative speed) requires a specific spot on the Moon or not.  If it does, that's yet another piece of real estate that becomes incredibly valuable, and requires claiming before your competitor does.

[OTV Booster]

C'mon. Where exactly is the SpaceX lead of 2-4 years? New Glen 7x2 is de facto finished product. They have lunar landing and commercial launches lined up. Can you see anything similar for Starship? New Glen 9x4 is just a long term growth path. Something like Starship V4. Every company has this. Why New Glen 9x4 was announced right now makes perfect sense.     

...

Maybe because NG 7x2 is a Falcon 9/H competitor, and Falcons are flying and reflying almost 200 times per year from 3 towers...  Talk about "finished product"...  NG hasn't even reflown once, and only carried mini payloads so far.

NG 9x4 meanwhile is a...  Falcon H competitor, and won't show up until long after SS v4 (and FH) are both retired...

A Starship competitor meanwhile doesn't even exist on BO's drawing boards, except as a concept.

So yeah, you heard it here first...  And it's a lot more than a 4 years gap, despite the enthusiasm from one good flight.

"When you get to the end zone, try to act as if you've been there before".

I'm gonna try to add some dispassionate observation.


SpaceX has hit a wall of bad luck. It might be self inflicted, or not. IDK. Blue has had a change in leadership explicitly due to old space style lollygaging and arguably Dave Limp at the helm is the reason New Glen has finally launched.


A superficial read is that SX has stalled out and Blue is performing. This might also be a profound truth but only future hindsight will let us know.


If SX hits the wall again before the next launch or future advances are interspaced with burdensome delays, they're in trouble. If things go smooth they are the SpaceX we've all come to know and ... well, respect.


If Blue hasn't had a culture change and the NG launch was just something ready to happen, that's bad. If Limp has stirred up some true mojo in his team, that is good.


The next few months might show interesting trend lines.

[meekGee]

"When you get to the end zone, try to act as if you've been there before".

Apply that to the alleged current "moon race" with China.

The race is silly and promotes using out of date tech.  The new tech will be ready when it's ready.

Aren't delays on SX HLS caused because they moon proposal is low priority offshoot of the Mars plans?
 

Broadly speaking, delays in SS in general are due to just how far beyond state of the art it is.

Detractors try to spin it differently, but nothing on anyone's drawing boards today is remotely comparable.

Specifically for HLS, yes, SpaceX is prioritizing the 2026 Mars campaign over HLS demo, but that's just common sense.  Launch windows should take precedence, and HLS could fly a few months later, there's really no months level urgency.

[DanClemmensen]

Broadly speaking, delays in SS in general are due to just how far beyond state of the art it is.

Detractors try to spin it differently, but nothing on anyone's drawing boards today is remotely comparable.

Delays are inevitable because space is hard, and SS is as you say harder than average.

Schedule slips, on the other hand, happen because the schedules are made by wild-eyed optimists who pretend that the delays will not happen.

This appears to be true for absolutely everybody in the entire space industry. Look at anything in the entire Artemis project. Recall that Artemis III was supposed to fly in 2024. Folks joke about "Elon time", but Elon is not actually any worse than the industry average.

[xvel]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure HLS is a priority as of now and Mars 2026 is not a thing anymore, they have no choice, BONG is not a paper rocket anymore and starship in a perfect world needs at least 10 test flights to prove all things, that's whole 2026, when gigabays are up and running, production capacity will increase 4x+ but that will happen in late 2026. There is no Mars 2026 guys, it's clearly impossible at this point.

[meekGee]

Broadly speaking, delays in SS in general are due to just how far beyond state of the art it is.

Detractors try to spin it differently, but nothing on anyone's drawing boards today is remotely comparable.

Delays are inevitable because space is hard, and SS is as you say harder than average.

Schedule slips, on the other hand, happen because the schedules are made by wild-eyed optimists who pretend that the delays will not happen.

This appears to be true for absolutely everybody in the entire space industry. Look at anything in the entire Artemis project. Recall that Artemis III was supposed to fly in 2024. Folks joke about "Elon time", but Elon is not actually any worse than the industry average.

When you manage a project, you know that you make schedules based on "reasonably optimistic" assumptions, and try to stick with them, knowing that they may not happen (so you add "margin")

And that's true about projects that are on completely known ground.

You can't have a realistic forward-looking schedule on a ground breaking project. There's just not enough knowledge.  You can get more or less lucky in how things eventually turn out, that's all.

Hell just a few months back everyone thought January was insane for a first v3 launch.  Then for some time it looked possible.  Then one kaboom later it isn't.  And what if there are two kabooms?

All you can do is go back a certain number of years and compare predictions to reality to conclude how well you've done.

[DanClemmensen]

Broadly speaking, delays in SS in general are due to just how far beyond state of the art it is.

Detractors try to spin it differently, but nothing on anyone's drawing boards today is remotely comparable.

Delays are inevitable because space is hard, and SS is as you say harder than average.

Schedule slips, on the other hand, happen because the schedules are made by wild-eyed optimists who pretend that the delays will not happen.

This appears to be true for absolutely everybody in the entire space industry. Look at anything in the entire Artemis project. Recall that Artemis III was supposed to fly in 2024. Folks joke about "Elon time", but Elon is not actually any worse than the industry average.

When you manage a project, you know that you make schedules based on "reasonably optimistic" assumptions, and try to stick with them, knowing that they may not happen (so you add "margin")

And that's true about projects that are on completely known ground.

You can't have a realistic forward-looking schedule on a ground breaking project. There's just not enough knowledge.  You can get more or less lucky in how things eventually turn out, that's all.

Hell just a few months back everyone thought January was insane for a first v3 launch.  Then for some time it looked possible.  Then one kaboom later it isn't.  And what if there are two kabooms?

All you can do is go back a certain number of years and compare predictions to reality to conclude how well you've done.

Sure. We can all build our PERT charts and do pretty well, based on what we know at a particular level of detail. That gives you a project schedule and a projected completion date. That's where the problem starts. Some aggressive take-charge type manager at some management level accepts that date and tries to manage to it, without stepping back and looking at the history of broadly comparable projects to try to estimate the likely effects of "unknown unknowns".

[JaimeZX]

Momentum vs energy.

Equal and opposite forces create differing velocities on differing masses.

Since momentum is proportional to velocity and kinetic energy is proportional to square of velocity, the heavier mass with the same momentum (thus less velocity) has much less kinetic energy.

To close the loop here - saying the same thing in different words:

Energy = Force * distance
Forces are equal and opposite
The distance is proportional to radius i.e. length of the arm
radius * total angle, or if you prefer the inscribed circle * # of revolutions.

Torque is also force * distance (but this distance is just the radius)
Energy = Torque * total angle

Appreciate all the convo around that. I guess it didn't occur to me that they'd just jettison the ballast. Seems like a recipe for getting regolith in many undesirable locations but... okay. 

[meekGee]

Broadly speaking, delays in SS in general are due to just how far beyond state of the art it is.

Detractors try to spin it differently, but nothing on anyone's drawing boards today is remotely comparable.

Delays are inevitable because space is hard, and SS is as you say harder than average.

Schedule slips, on the other hand, happen because the schedules are made by wild-eyed optimists who pretend that the delays will not happen.

This appears to be true for absolutely everybody in the entire space industry. Look at anything in the entire Artemis project. Recall that Artemis III was supposed to fly in 2024. Folks joke about "Elon time", but Elon is not actually any worse than the industry average.

When you manage a project, you know that you make schedules based on "reasonably optimistic" assumptions, and try to stick with them, knowing that they may not happen (so you add "margin")

And that's true about projects that are on completely known ground.

You can't have a realistic forward-looking schedule on a ground breaking project. There's just not enough knowledge.  You can get more or less lucky in how things eventually turn out, that's all.

Hell just a few months back everyone thought January was insane for a first v3 launch.  Then for some time it looked possible.  Then one kaboom later it isn't.  And what if there are two kabooms?

All you can do is go back a certain number of years and compare predictions to reality to conclude how well you've done.

Sure. We can all build our PERT charts and do pretty well, based on what we know at a particular level of detail. That gives you a project schedule and a projected completion date. That's where the problem starts. Some aggressive take-charge type manager at some management level accepts that date and tries to manage to it, without stepping back and looking at the history of broadly comparable projects to try to estimate the likely effects of "unknown unknowns".

"broadly comparable"...  Turns out that unless they're VERY comparable, your planning charts is all you've got to go by.

Sometimes over zealous higher up try to talk you into compressing those, but we don't know that this is what happened in any of these cases.

[DanClemmensen]

Broadly speaking, delays in SS in general are due to just how far beyond state of the art it is.

Detractors try to spin it differently, but nothing on anyone's drawing boards today is remotely comparable.

Delays are inevitable because space is hard, and SS is as you say harder than average.

Schedule slips, on the other hand, happen because the schedules are made by wild-eyed optimists who pretend that the delays will not happen.

This appears to be true for absolutely everybody in the entire space industry. Look at anything in the entire Artemis project. Recall that Artemis III was supposed to fly in 2024. Folks joke about "Elon time", but Elon is not actually any worse than the industry average.

When you manage a project, you know that you make schedules based on "reasonably optimistic" assumptions, and try to stick with them, knowing that they may not happen (so you add "margin")

And that's true about projects that are on completely known ground.

You can't have a realistic forward-looking schedule on a ground breaking project. There's just not enough knowledge.  You can get more or less lucky in how things eventually turn out, that's all.

Hell just a few months back everyone thought January was insane for a first v3 launch.  Then for some time it looked possible.  Then one kaboom later it isn't.  And what if there are two kabooms?

All you can do is go back a certain number of years and compare predictions to reality to conclude how well you've done.

Sure. We can all build our PERT charts and do pretty well, based on what we know at a particular level of detail. That gives you a project schedule and a projected completion date. That's where the problem starts. Some aggressive take-charge type manager at some management level accepts that date and tries to manage to it, without stepping back and looking at the history of broadly comparable projects to try to estimate the likely effects of "unknown unknowns".

"broadly comparable"...  Turns out that unless they're very comparable, your planning charts is all you've got to go by.

Sometimes over zealous higher up try to talk you into compressing those, but we don't know that this is what happened in any of these cases.

So how did NASA sign up to do Artemis III by 2024?

[spacenut]

SpaceX has the Superheavy booster and it has landed at the launch pad twice.  They can easily strip down a Starship and make an expendable upper stage and launch anything up to 150-200+ tons right now if they wanted to.  They are mostly working on Starship.  Yes they had a COPV problem with the recent booster, but that is quickly fixable.  Starship has a lot of tweaking to do before it can land back at the pad. 

[meekGee]

Broadly speaking, delays in SS in general are due to just how far beyond state of the art it is.

Detractors try to spin it differently, but nothing on anyone's drawing boards today is remotely comparable.

Delays are inevitable because space is hard, and SS is as you say harder than average.

Schedule slips, on the other hand, happen because the schedules are made by wild-eyed optimists who pretend that the delays will not happen.

This appears to be true for absolutely everybody in the entire space industry. Look at anything in the entire Artemis project. Recall that Artemis III was supposed to fly in 2024. Folks joke about "Elon time", but Elon is not actually any worse than the industry average.

When you manage a project, you know that you make schedules based on "reasonably optimistic" assumptions, and try to stick with them, knowing that they may not happen (so you add "margin")

And that's true about projects that are on completely known ground.

You can't have a realistic forward-looking schedule on a ground breaking project. There's just not enough knowledge.  You can get more or less lucky in how things eventually turn out, that's all.

Hell just a few months back everyone thought January was insane for a first v3 launch.  Then for some time it looked possible.  Then one kaboom later it isn't.  And what if there are two kabooms?

All you can do is go back a certain number of years and compare predictions to reality to conclude how well you've done.

Sure. We can all build our PERT charts and do pretty well, based on what we know at a particular level of detail. That gives you a project schedule and a projected completion date. That's where the problem starts. Some aggressive take-charge type manager at some management level accepts that date and tries to manage to it, without stepping back and looking at the history of broadly comparable projects to try to estimate the likely effects of "unknown unknowns".

"broadly comparable"...  Turns out that unless they're very comparable, your planning charts is all you've got to go by.

Sometimes over zealous higher up try to talk you into compressing those, but we don't know that this is what happened in any of these cases.

So how did NASA sign up to do Artemis III by 2024?

Yup that's one of these cases where the higher up sets a date for no reason.

The only acceptable version of this is when the boss sets a date, but is flexible on scope.  This requires an informed boss though...

[meekGee]

"When you get to the end zone, try to act as if you've been there before".

Apply that to the alleged current "moon race" with China.

The race is silly and promotes using out of date tech.  The new tech will be ready when it's ready.

And it's being capitalized upon by the cult of mediocrity...  "You're trying to advance too much and putting these short-term goals at risk"...

Basically turning near-sightedness into a feature.

Or rather a combination of minimalist near-sighted planning and abstract far-sighted vision.

I'm visiting a country now that's basically defined by that philosophy, and the consequences are not a pretty sight.

[TomH]

The (new moon) race is silly and promotes using out of date tech.  The new tech will be ready when it's ready.

True, but unfortunately, sometimes high-ups put their own egos ahead of what is reasonable.

[OTV Booster]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure HLS is a priority as of now and Mars 2026 is not a thing anymore, they have no choice, BONG is not a paper rocket anymore and starship in a perfect world needs at least 10 test flights to prove all things, that's whole 2026, when gigabays are up and running, production capacity will increase 4x+ but that will happen in late 2026. There is no Mars 2026 guys, it's clearly impossible at this point.

I wouldn't totally rule out mars 2026.


The logical test to follow a one tanker transfer test is a multi tanker transfer test. IF the single tanker test happens late Q2 and IF SX can control boiloff enough, a 3-4 tanker transfer to a minimally viable sorta depot is a reasonable check mark on the Artemis path. Likewise a depot transfer to a ship.


IF this can be done by mid Q4 2026 and that ship then does a Mars burn, in no way does that detract from Artemis. It doesn't have to land. Maybe aerobrake into orbit, maybe burn up. It doesn't even need any payload other than instrumentation and comms.


The odds for all this happening is low but non zero. The tradeoff for SX most likely would be temporarily deprioritizing SS StarLink launches, not shortchanging Artemis.


What would drive SX to do this? IMO, Musk would be showing the world that he is serious about Artemis and giving proof that Duffy is Daffy. Y&MMMV (Your & My Milage May Vary).