NASA HLS (Human Landing System) Lunar Landers

[punder]

I agree that if this is true, NASA should cancel the HLS contract. I do not think they should then give out a Mars contract. The response to a company trying to coerce the Government, to unilaterally force a change in public policy, should not be giving it exactly what it wants.

SpaceX is not trying to coerce the government or force a change in policy by taking this action, ...

You can't know that.

as if it’s a bad thing that SpaceX is trying to accelerate NASA’s plans.

Pretty sure no other large powerful corporations have tried to “coerce the government or force a change in policy.”

Nope. Pretty dang sure Boeing has never done that. Or GM. Or… [file size exceeds attachment limits]

And it’s all perfectly legal. “Coerce” and “force” are negatively charged synonyms for “lobby.”

[JEF_300]

I agree that if this is true, NASA should cancel the HLS contract. I do not think they should then give out a Mars contract. The response to a company trying to coerce the Government, to unilaterally force a change in public policy, should not be giving it exactly what it wants.

SpaceX is not trying to coerce the government or force a change in policy by taking this action, ...

You can't know that.

as if it’s a bad thing that SpaceX is trying to accelerate NASA’s plans.

Pretty sure no other large powerful corporations have tried to “coerce the government or force a change in policy.”

Nope. Pretty dang sure Boeing has never done that. Or GM. Or… [file size exceeds attachment limits]

And it’s all perfectly legal. “Coerce” and “force” are negatively charged synonyms for “lobby.”

Lobbying is not at all the same as what this discussion is about. Lobbying is going over NASA's head to their boss, this is discussion is about a contractor (by rumor) taking NASA money and doing what it wants instead. Entirely different problems.

[DanClemmensen]

I agree that if this is true, NASA should cancel the HLS contract. I do not think they should then give out a Mars contract. The response to a company trying to coerce the Government, to unilaterally force a change in public policy, should not be giving it exactly what it wants.

SpaceX is not trying to coerce the government or force a change in policy by taking this action, ...

You can't know that.

as if it’s a bad thing that SpaceX is trying to accelerate NASA’s plans.

Pretty sure no other large powerful corporations have tried to “coerce the government or force a change in policy.”

Nope. Pretty dang sure Boeing has never done that. Or GM. Or… [file size exceeds attachment limits]

And it’s all perfectly legal. “Coerce” and “force” are negatively charged synonyms for “lobby.”

Lobbying is not at all the same as what this discussion is about. Lobbying is going over NASA's head to their boss, this is discussion is about a contractor (by rumor) taking NASA money and doing what it wants instead. Entirely different problems.

The HLS contract is fixed price with progress payments based on milestones. SpaceX cannot "take NASA money" until they meet contractual requirements. This is not like the cost-plus SLS contract where you do "whatever you want" and charge for it whether or not you actually accomplish anything.

I'm sympathetic to your underlying point. The administration is strongly indicating that policy changes will occur and Musk, not SpaceX, is influencing these changes. Almost all US companies, including SpaceX, are attempting to anticipate and adapt to these changes. Our problem here is that it's really hard to separate Musk from SpaceX.

[punder]

I agree that if this is true, NASA should cancel the HLS contract. I do not think they should then give out a Mars contract. The response to a company trying to coerce the Government, to unilaterally force a change in public policy, should not be giving it exactly what it wants.

SpaceX is not trying to coerce the government or force a change in policy by taking this action, ...

You can't know that.

as if it’s a bad thing that SpaceX is trying to accelerate NASA’s plans.

Pretty sure no other large powerful corporations have tried to “coerce the government or force a change in policy.”

Nope. Pretty dang sure Boeing has never done that. Or GM. Or… [file size exceeds attachment limits]

And it’s all perfectly legal. “Coerce” and “force” are negatively charged synonyms for “lobby.”

Lobbying is not at all the same as what this discussion is about. Lobbying is going over NASA's head to their boss, this is discussion is about a contractor (by rumor) taking NASA money and doing what it wants instead. Entirely different problems.

Yes, rumor.

Also wish people would remember that Musk may have enormous influence, but he doesn’t have the authority to set public policy.

Also also, SpaceX has been a great partner to NASA and is highly unlikely to risk that partnership through fraud. Unless you buy into Musk = Satan which apparently is a thing.

[Robotbeat]

I agree that if this is true, NASA should cancel the HLS contract. I do not think they should then give out a Mars contract. The response to a company trying to coerce the Government, to unilaterally force a change in public policy, should not be giving it exactly what it wants.

SpaceX is not trying to coerce the government or force a change in policy by taking this action, ...

You can't know that.

as if it’s a bad thing that SpaceX is trying to accelerate NASA’s plans.

Pretty sure no other large powerful corporations have tried to “coerce the government or force a change in policy.”

Nope. Pretty dang sure Boeing has never done that. Or GM. Or… [file size exceeds attachment limits]

And it’s all perfectly legal. “Coerce” and “force” are negatively charged synonyms for “lobby.”

Lobbying is not at all the same as what this discussion is about. Lobbying is going over NASA's head to their boss, this is discussion is about a contractor (by rumor) taking NASA money and doing what it wants instead. Entirely different problems.

Then either the rumor or your interpretation of it are wrong because HLS is milestone based. They don’t get paid until they deliver whichever milestone. They get the money AFTER doing the work, not BEFORE.

[RedLineTrain]

Has the WSJ ever had a clear line into SpaceX?  Unless presented with solid evidence to the contrary, I will assume that this is a line of attack from the usual characters.

[JEF_300]

The HLS contract is fixed price with progress payments based on milestones. SpaceX cannot "take NASA money" until they meet contractual requirements. This is not like the cost-plus SLS contract where you do "whatever you want" and charge for it whether or not you actually accomplish anything.

Then either the rumor or your interpretation of it are wrong because HLS is milestone based. They don’t get paid until they deliver whichever milestone. They get the money AFTER doing the work, not BEFORE.

We all know it's not that simple. There is a very real degree to which only the last milestone actually matters. We're seeing this right now with Starliner; NASA has already given Boeing a lot of milestone payments for work already completed, and yet thus far all of that money has provided NASA with zero value. If Starliner was cancelled tomorrow, NASA would have gotten no real value out of those milestone payments.

Obviously this situation is better in this regard, since Starship will for sure be useful eventually in some way. But it is totally plausible that you could have a situation where all of the HLS milestone payments NASA does make don't actually get it any closer to putting humans back on the Moon.

[DanClemmensen]

The HLS contract is fixed price with progress payments based on milestones. SpaceX cannot "take NASA money" until they meet contractual requirements. This is not like the cost-plus SLS contract where you do "whatever you want" and charge for it whether or not you actually accomplish anything.

Then either the rumor or your interpretation of it are wrong because HLS is milestone based. They don’t get paid until they deliver whichever milestone. They get the money AFTER doing the work, not BEFORE.

We all know it's not that simple. There is a very real degree to which only the last milestone actually matters. We're seeing this right now with Starliner; NASA has already given Boeing a lot of milestone payments for work already completed, and yet thus far all of that money has provided NASA with zero value. If Starliner was cancelled tomorrow, NASA would have gotten no real value out of those milestone payments.

Obviously this situation is better in this regard, since Starship will for sure be useful eventually in some way. But it is totally plausible that you could have a situation where all of HLS milestone payments NASA does make don't actually get it any closer to putting humans back on the Moon.

Life is not perfect. We already have a situation where more than $75 billion has been spent on SLS/Orion without actually getting any closer to putting humans back on the Moon.

By contrast we have not yet seen any evidence that SpaceX intends to miss any HLS milestones.

[JEF_300]

The HLS contract is fixed price with progress payments based on milestones. SpaceX cannot "take NASA money" until they meet contractual requirements. This is not like the cost-plus SLS contract where you do "whatever you want" and charge for it whether or not you actually accomplish anything.

Then either the rumor or your interpretation of it are wrong because HLS is milestone based. They don’t get paid until they deliver whichever milestone. They get the money AFTER doing the work, not BEFORE.

We all know it's not that simple. There is a very real degree to which only the last milestone actually matters. We're seeing this right now with Starliner; NASA has already given Boeing a lot of milestone payments for work already completed, and yet thus far all of that money has provided NASA with zero value. If Starliner was cancelled tomorrow, NASA would have gotten no real value out of those milestone payments.

Obviously this situation is better in this regard, since Starship will for sure be useful eventually in some way. But it is totally plausible that you could have a situation where all of HLS milestone payments NASA does make don't actually get it any closer to putting humans back on the Moon.

Life is not perfect. We already have a situation where more than $75 billion has been spent on SLS/Orion without actually getting any closer to putting humans back on the Moon.

By contrast we have not yet seen any evidence that SpaceX intends to miss any HLS milestones.

Agreed. All I'm saying is that fixed price contracts cannot just be about payment for work, because the work on it's own is of no value to NASA.

[clongton]

And you definitely don't take government money and then not do what you're being paid to do.

Members of Congress do exactly that every day of the week - 24/7/365.

[Robotbeat]

The HLS contract is fixed price with progress payments based on milestones. SpaceX cannot "take NASA money" until they meet contractual requirements. This is not like the cost-plus SLS contract where you do "whatever you want" and charge for it whether or not you actually accomplish anything.

Then either the rumor or your interpretation of it are wrong because HLS is milestone based. They don’t get paid until they deliver whichever milestone. They get the money AFTER doing the work, not BEFORE.

We all know it's not that simple. There is a very real degree to which only the last milestone actually matters. We're seeing this right now with Starliner; NASA has already given Boeing a lot of milestone payments for work already completed, and yet thus far all of that money has provided NASA with zero value. If Starliner was cancelled tomorrow, NASA would have gotten no real value out of those milestone payments.

Obviously this situation is better in this regard, since Starship will for sure be useful eventually in some way. But it is totally plausible that you could have a situation where all of HLS milestone payments NASA does make don't actually get it any closer to putting humans back on the Moon.

Life is not perfect. We already have a situation where more than $75 billion has been spent on SLS/Orion without actually getting any closer to putting humans back on the Moon.

By contrast we have not yet seen any evidence that SpaceX intends to miss any HLS milestones.

Agreed. All I'm saying is that fixed price contracts cannot just be about payment for work, because the work on it's own is of no value to NASA.

Part of the terms for a reconfigured contract could just be that if SpaceX takes the deal to send crew to Mars instead of the Moon, they forgo any more milestones until actually landing crew on Mars.

This is all silly, BTW. We’re talking about procedural stuff, where SpaceX is still very much technically and procedurally okay, and they’re fulfilling the ultimate goal of NASA’s Moon to Mars program, but getting mad at doing it faster than usual by potentially going straight to Mars. Why would we be mad at this?

[TheRadicalModerate]

This is kinda out of left field, but does anybody remember first two attached images from about 18 months ago?  They were alleged to be leaks from SpaceX, but I think they were widely dismissed as fan-art and/or forgeries.¹

This came up on another thread, and it got me to wondering if they might be legitimate, albeit old, leaks.

The third attachment is what's currently on the SpaceX website.  But I've marked it to highlight that there's a door on this version that's consistent with the leaked images.

There are a lot of nice things to be said for this kind of solar array wing (SAW) deployment:

1) SpaceX could use a variant on the Starlink fold-out solar panels to implement it.

2) With the two shown positions, the SAWs would work well both on the lunar surface and in space, with the nose (or tail) pointed at the Sun, which would minimize insolation on the tankage.  The SAWs would also shield a significant percentage of the tankage from all insolation.

3) In the "down" position (as used on the surface), the SAWs would be able to deal with Raptor-level acceleration pretty easily.  (Note, however, that both landing and ascending from the lunar surface with the SAWs deployed would block the presumed ascent thrusters.)

4) We know from Dragon 1 that SpaceX is comfy with re-folding and stowing SAWs.  Getting them to stow while under 1.62m/s² gravity would be a new trick, but it's not completely new work.

5) One nice thing about making the SAWs stowable is that the the HLS would be able to get back to LEO using aerobraking.  With the conformal panels, aerobraking would oxidize the bejeezus out of them.  With them stowed, it's entirely possible that whatever the low-boiloff coating is for the HLS Starship could be made to survive low-delta-v aerobrake passes (say about 25m/s per pass), returning the HLS to LEO in a couple of months. 

This isn't needed for Option A/B and SLT as currently specified, but there are a number of other conops and applications that could make use of this capability to remove a lot of propellant from the conops.  Note that multi-pass aerobraking would require a lot of deploy/stow cycles for at least one of the SAWs.

6) This same scheme could be used for Mars Starships, with two caveats:
a) You'd have to forgo two of the SAWs, unless the deployment doors were compatible with the TPS.
b) SAWs dangling down on the martian surface isn't very efficient for high Sun angles.  But it would work fine for immediate power after landing, and before ground-based solar panels were deployed.

One other thing about the current SpaceX artwork vs. the NASA artwork:  The HLS Starship now has a nose cap covering what would presumably be the nose docking ring.  I can think of a few reasons why this might have been added.

i) It's very handy if aerobraking is a requirement.

ii) They're worried about lunar dust getting into the docking seals.

iii) They've moved the docking ring somewhere else, e.g. onto the side of the barrel, where its tunnel could be integrated into an airlock that sits in the garage.  (This would be weird, in that two Starships couldn't dock together without some kind of weird extendable docking ring, or without opening payload doors and docking at 90º to each other, kinda like how the Shuttle did it.)

iv) The SpaceX art department dropped the ball and put a nose cap on by accident.  (The debug cycle on artwork is less rigorous than flight testing.)

Again, this is all speculating on stuff that's 18 old in one case, and 6 months old in another, and artwork is not necessarily engineering (although I suspect that the SpaceX art department can pull CAD stuff and render it into pretty backgrounds).  Kinda interesting, though.

___________
¹I think this is the original tweet:

https://x.com/ThePrimalDino/status/1720073146852618450

²This is different from what's on the NASA website (attachment #4 below), which still has the conformal solar panels glued to the barrel.  Not too surprising that the NASA artwork would be out of date.  (It might also be the case that the SpaceX artwork might be out of date as well.)

[Robotbeat]

People who know if they’re real are unlikely to confirm it. I tend to think David’s source was right. (Not based on anything from my day job, tho. If I DID know one way or another from my day job, I wouldn’t be able to say.)

[TheRadicalModerate]

People who know if they’re real are unlikely to confirm it. I tend to think David’s source was right. (Not based on anything from my day job, tho. If I DID know one way or another from my day job, I wouldn’t be able to say.)

I'm not sure if I care that they're real.  But I do think it's a pretty good design, with some interesting consequences.

[pochimax]

I don't know if it will be the final version, but given that NASA document, it seems likely that it's a solution that has been studied. Whether it's the final one, I don't know.

It catches my attention... Best part is no part, so...

Why complicate life with deployable/retractable solar panels? Isn't the Dragon 2 solar panel system a better solution?

So the question is: is this an optional decision or rather an inevitable decision? Did the Dragon 2-type solar panels not generate enough electricity?
...

[Robotbeat]

I don't know if it will be the final version, but given that NASA document, it seems likely that it's a solution that has been studied. Whether it's the final one, I don't know.

It catches my attention... Best part is no part, so...

Why complicate life with deployable/retractable solar panels? Isn't the Dragon 2 solar panel system a better solution?

So the question is: is this an optional decision or rather an inevitable decision? Did the Dragon 2-type solar panels not generate enough electricity?
...

More difficult to deal with conformal panels on launch from earth.

[TheRadicalModerate]

More difficult to deal with conformal panels on launch from earth.

Also, to generate power from conformals in deep space, you have to put the Sun normal to the cylinder sides, which unacceptably heats the prop tanks.

You’re still screwed on the lunar surface, but even there, the combination of the SAWs and a gap between them and the tank walls acts like cheesy MLI.

[JEF_300]

More difficult to deal with conformal panels on launch from earth.

Also, to generate power from conformals in deep space, you have to put the Sun normal to the cylinder sides, which unacceptably heats the prop tanks.

You’re still screwed on the lunar surface, but even there, the combination of the SAWs and a gap between them and the tank walls acts like cheesy MLI.

Extra prop-tank heating strikes me as something that could be overcome for the HLS use-case... but probably not for the Mars use-case, which means they're probably developing non-conformal panels for Starship anyway, which makes me think that's more likely.

[TheRadicalModerate]

More difficult to deal with conformal panels on launch from earth.

Also, to generate power from conformals in deep space, you have to put the Sun normal to the cylinder sides, which unacceptably heats the prop tanks.

You’re still screwed on the lunar surface, but even there, the combination of the SAWs and a gap between them and the tank walls acts like cheesy MLI.

Extra prop-tank heating strikes me as something that could be overcome for the HLS use-case... but probably not for the Mars use-case, which means they're probably developing non-conformal panels for Starship anyway, which makes me think that's more likely.

The HLS has to sit in NRHO for 90 days.

If the conformals yielded gobs of power, you could argue that a cryocooler would cover a multitude of sins.  But conformals also suffer from the fact that half their surface area in unproductive at any one time, and there's less surface area to boot.  The shading problem is also true for SAWs on the surface, but not on-orbit.  As long as the deployment and stowage issues are tractable (not at all clear), SAWs are simply better.

[TheRadicalModerate]

If we believe the skinny budget will be enacted as requested, Gateway is gone.  Once SLS/Orion is gone (also largely a victim of the skinny budget), that allows the successor cislunar transit system to use, if not LLO, maybe a HELO or near-polar frozen orbit.  Some consequences: 

1) Both of those lop at least 800m/s off of the the HLS delta-v budget.

2) They add about 950m/s to the transit system's delta-v.

3) They make loitering with prop a considerably warmer prospect.

This makes Starship delta-v margins much more comfortable, and likely removes the need for HEEO refueling.  But that comes at the cost of better boiloff control.

Blue Moon could change substantially if it stages from lower orbits.  Blue Moon, even when expendable, must refuel in cislunar space before doing a descent/ascent mission, so Cislunar Transport's delta-v budget will get substantially worse.  And of course hydrolox is even more sensitive to the total heat flux.