SpaceX for Moon Base

[sanman]

https://www.space.com/37549-elon-musk-moon-base-mars.html

"To really get the public real fired up, I think we've got to have a base on the moon," the billionaire founder and CEO of SpaceX said today (July 19) at the 2017 International Space Station Research and Development (ISSR&D) conference in Washington, D.C.

"Having some permanent presence on another heavenly body, which would be the kind of moon base, and then getting people to Mars and beyond — that's the continuance of the dream of Apollo that I think people are really looking for," Musk told NASA ISS program manager Kirk Shireman, who interviewed him onstage at the conference.

Now that Musk has called for a Moon base to be established as part of getting humanity off-world, how will this impact SpaceX's overall roadmap into the future? It seems the Red Dragon missions are being shelved, as well as propulsive landings for Dragon in general.

If the recent creation of the US National Space Council may be leading to new plans coalescing in relation to the Moon, then is SpaceX merely reactively realigning with the way the winds (and dollars) are blowing? To what extent is Mars rocket now morphing into Moon rocket for the nearer term?

Since going to the Moon offers a distinct set of challenges compared to going to Mars, what particular issues will SpaceX most have to get a handle on, and how will they have to adjust their technology development to meet the new mission requirements?

In what ways can a Moon base help with SpaceX's long-term goals of colonizing Mars?
By pursuing a lunar agenda in near term, how much farther out does this push the SpaceX timeline for Mars?

Could Musk/SpaceX treat us to a Moon-landing/Moon-base video, just to show us what their vision for the Moon looks like?

[meekGee]

How come this thread was not started by WannaMoonBase?

[guckyfan]

Let me be cynical about it. This is as much about rivalry Elon Musk vs. Jeff Bezos. Elon would not leave that market to Bezos uncontended.

Edit: Elon would not let this push out the Mars plans.

[saundby]

I think the interest is more in servicing a Moon base effort than building one. However, I think it could help fund the buildup of propellant depots and the use of craft that use those depots. It'll also let SpX do some trades on whether to have a space-based fleet and transfer payloads between craft in space or to refuel ground-launched craft in orbit for flight onward to the Moon.

[sanman]

My thought was that Musk/SpaceX is doing this in reaction to some new Moon-related development -- and this might possibly be the recently announced US National Space Council deciding to go in for a Moon base.  Presumably, Musk and his people have their ear to the ground, and would catch wind of something like this coming down the pipeline, and that this may have then prompted them to revise their plans somewhat to swim with the flow.

Plus, Musk is a numbers guy, and the investment risk is much lower for lunar than for Mars missions. Perhaps as ITS development progresses, it's becoming apparent that some things may be too great a leap/risk, and that it's better to take smaller steps. ("Gradatim Ferociter"?)

If NASA were to offer up contracts relating to Moon Base operations, then would SpaceX mainly be competing for launch contracts only, or would they perform further roles and develop custom purpose-built hardware for that?

[TaurusLittrow]

EM can see which way the cash cow (NASA) is headed and wants to get in front of the herd. I can easily see a COTS- and CCP-like arrangement for the DSG with SpaceX one of the providers. ITS, for whatever reason, is being downsized/modified, and part of its development cost could be underwritten by such contracts. Meanwhile, BO/Bezos seems interested in supplying a moon base (Blue Moon) and it will be interesting to see whether SpaceX responds with proposals of their own.

[francesco nicoli]

Musk is a dreamer.
But he is a rational dreamer wh heads a company. Companies need revenue streams to survive; even more so, when their prime contractor is the Government.
Government is abandoning Mars plans, which we all know they were never completely engaged with. They had no rocket, no ship, no landing gear, no habitats, and no money to develop all that. Thus, Nasa is shifting to the Moon which seems to be a more realistic attempt to turn the tide and not corroborate the impression that the post-2008 era has been a complete failure; Trump is shifting to the moon because this gives him a realistic political payoff in possibly reasonable times. Musk is switching to the Moon because contract money is going there. And even if his ultimate goal remains Mars, he needs contract money to develop his Mars plans.
In sum: my generation may yet see a Mars landing in our lifetime, but I am born in 1988 so Im kinda new to the business. The "old" (experienced) folk here most likely won't. Personally I am fine with it, for any NASA Mars Mission was at risk of being an overly expensive flag&footprint exercise & nothing else, while a moon base is by definition more than that.

[TaurusLittrow]

Musk is a dreamer.
But he is a rational dreamer wh heads a company. Companies need revenue streams to survive; even more so, when their prime contractor is the Government.
Government is abandoning Mars plans, which we all know they were never completely engaged with. They had no rocket, no ship, no landing gear, no habitats, and no money to develop all that. Thus, Nasa is shifting to the Moon which seems to be a more realistic attempt to turn the tide and not corroborate the impression that the post-2008 era has been a complete failure; Trump is shifting to the moon because this gives him a realistic political payoff in possibly reasonable times. Musk is switching to the Moon because contract money is going there. And even if his ultimate goal remains Mars, he needs contract money to develop his Mars plans.
In sum: my generation may yet see a Mars landing in our lifetime, but I am born in 1988 so Im kinda new to the business. The "old" (experienced) folk here most likely won't. Personally I am fine with it, for any NASA Mars Mission was at risk of being an overly expensive flag&footprint exercise & nothing else, while a moon base is by definition more than that.

I think there's a fighting chance that aging baby boomers, ahem, may yet see human missions to the Mars "system" if not surface. Another reason to lay off the booze and fried food.

[clongton]

Since going to the Moon offers a distinct set of challenges compared to going to Mars, what particular issues will SpaceX most have to get a handle on, and how will they have to adjust their technology development to meet the new mission requirements?

I said in a different thread that while propulsive landing for Dragon 2 was being dropped that SpaceX propulsive landing development was not going away any time soon. And this is why.

The only way down to the lunar surface is propulsive landing. No atmosphere means no aero-capture and no parachutes. So all of the ITS-based landing profiles are out the window when we are talking about the moon. Landing will be done propulsively, just like the LM. SpaceX will have to continue development and perfection of propulsive landing. Dragon 2 may not use it but SpaceX will.

[eric z]

  With some great exceptions, it has been relatively lonely here being a MoonMan- now that Mr. Musk has signaled his interest we will have lots of company. Now is time for everyone to come together w/o delay on a unified strategy, and lobby the appropriators and administrations inevitably involved to get off their behinds and get rolling already!

[clongton]

I have always been a moon-first guy and unashamedly stated it many times on this forum.

We have an entire world right next door just begging to be exploited and developed and we are ignoring it.
Mars, to me, while exciting to consider has always been a leap too far except in the most limited form of boots and flags missions. In my view, bringing Mars into the human fold should be attempted only after we have been comfortably living and working on the moon for decades and exploiting its resources in a meaningful way that enables human expansion out into the solar system. Resources for beginning and sustaining human settlement of the Martian surface until it becomes self-sustaining should be sourced from the moon, not climbing out of earth's deep gravity well. Any attempt to do it without lunar resources is, in my view, extremely short-sighted and wasteful, and quite possibly doomed to failure because of the lack of sustainability. Both EML-1 and EML-2 are half way to anyplace in the solar system. Both locations are just a short hop from the lunar surface but may as well be half way to Jupiter if one is starting from the terrestrial surface.

Go to the moon first. Settle it. Develop it. Use it for what it is - Earth's stepping stone into the rest of the solar system.

[guckyfan]

Go to the moon first. Settle it. Develop it. Use it for what it is - Earth's stepping stone into the rest of the solar system.

I wish people would not say that. Moon is an interesting destination in itself. So go there, settle it, develop it.

A stepping stone it is not.

[JamesH65]

Go to the moon first. Settle it. Develop it. Use it for what it is - Earth's stepping stone into the rest of the solar system.

I wish people would not say that. Moon is an interesting destination in itself. So go there, settle it, develop it.

A stepping stone it is not.

I suppose it could be a stepping stone to other airless bodies in the solar system, since tech developed for the moon would be applicable to those sorts of places.

Whether other airless bodies are worthwhile is another question - I suspect some asteroids may well be.

[AncientU]

Let's go somewhere.

[blasphemer]

I wish people would not say that. Moon is an interesting destination in itself. So go there, settle it, develop it.

A stepping stone it is not.

A stepping stone in terms of technology. Things like closed loop life support systems, propellant depots, some ISRU and radiation shielding can be to a large degree perfected in cislunar space. These technologies will be a basic requirement not just for Mars, but everywhere.

But I agree that Moon is a worthy goal in itself. I would even say that either there will be a Moonbase and a Mars base, or there wont be any Mars base at all. It is hard to realistically imagine going straight for Mars, IMHO.



I want to see humanity get out there as soon as possible. Thats why Moon > Mars, mini-ITS > ITS and nothing > Red Dragon. All of these recent developments simplify the goal and thus bring us CLOSER to finally having some deep space presence. Then we can go from there, but 50 years stuck in LEO is more than enough!

[Nilof]

If you are developing a rapidly reusable SHLV, colonizing the moon makes a lot of sense, simply because you can build a large colony very quickly.

An MCT can be expected to make one trip to Mars per synod at the very most, more likely one every two synods. That translates to just 10-15 reuses of the expensive spacecraft over three decades. By comparison, the same spacecraft could do >1000 trips to cislunar space over a similar period, assuming that the supporting tankers can launch a couple times a week. The difference in cargo capacity per unit time is roughly two orders of magnitude.

As a general rule, the larger the scale of your space colonization project is, the more attractive the moon becomes. Afaik, the ITS has a launch capacity an order of magnitude or two higher than what O'Neill envisaged for lunar colonization in the high frontier.

[meberbs]

Any attempt to do it without lunar resources is, in my view, extremely short-sighted and wasteful, and quite possibly doomed to failure because of the lack of sustainability.

I agree with your points, and a permanent presence on the moon just makes sense as the next step. I don't think however that this part of your statement matches Musk's perspective. When BFR goes to Mars, it will probably be a straight from Earth situation, and Musk won't be waiting for lunar development to be far enough along to provide support. Musk just wants others to go to the moon so he can get revenue while testing the system there.

It seems to me that he was reducing the scale of BFR anyway for economic reasons (development costs, more economical for satellite and constellation deployment). The political wind shifting back to the moon may be part of it, but I think he would be promoting this anyway right now. His goal is to improve the economics of BFR development. If NASA gets together with ESA/maybe others, and starts on a moon base, Musk can get some development funding for BFR from them while marketing it as a Lunar COTS system. It doesn't seem likely he would be able to do the same with Mars, at least for the moon "NASA has done that before."

I don't think Musk is really being deceptive though "To really get the public real fired up, I think we've got to have a base on the moon," seems like a true statement to me and I'm betting he believes it too, he just thinks it will be even more awesome when he lands people on Mars. I think the timing will be interesting, Musk probably will try to send BFR to Mars in 2022 (he may say 2020 at first, but that is too unrealistic for me to consider), and I'd say would have a good chance at it by 2024 (unmanned). On the other hand if NASA does start on a moon base, it would be impressive for them to be placing the first modules on the moon by 2024. Even the current plan for the DSG would barely be started assembly.

[MATTBLAK]

If you can live on the Moon successfully; you could probably live nearly anywhere in the Solar System. The Moon is a useful analogue for living most places in the Solar System - with the likely exception of Titan. One could make glib comparisons between the Moon and Mars - that they are both vast, dry, airless deserts. Well; virtually airless, if you're Mars. But Mars has about twice the gravity of the Moon, a thousand times or so more atmosphere, a lot more water, milder extremes of temperature and a lot more surface area. Not to mention a day/night period about 24 hours long, not 672 hours.

Nonetheless; Mars is still a lot closer to the Moon in format than Triton, Enceladus or Europa etc. Only Mercury really compares to the Moon - but it's almost unreachable in the deep gravity well of the Sun, so we can discount any manned visits in our lifetimes. Yes; the Moon is not a literal stepping stone - I've had to explain this to several laymen recently who asked me earnest questions on the subject. For example; it's unlikely there is enough water at the poles to devote to making lots of rocket fuel for further sojourns into the Solar System. I think the best use of lunar water is for Outpost or Base inhabitants.

But it is a metaphorical stepping stone in a lessons-learned, meta-application way for what comes next. In-situ resource utilization for oxygen, water, materials for construction and 3D-printing, radiation shielding, dust-mitigation, system overhaul and 'bootstrapping', improvisation, sheer operations experience... The way that Apollo, the Salyuts, Skylab, Spacelab, Mir, ISS and Tiangong have all made a knowledge base for space operations to come. And another less-easily quantifiable metric has been spawned.

Inspiration.

A Lunar Outpost or Base is not easy - it will be hard. And in the past, we have done things not because they are easy; but because they are hard. Choose and mix your metaphors at will and as appropriate. We are not ready for Mars just yet. We are still in 'short pants'. We're simply not ready for the 'big boy pants' of Mars just yet.

[wannamoonbase]

How come this thread was not started by WannaMoonBase?

I was busy and had limited time yesterday.  I was looking to see if a thread like this was started already.

I'm really excited by EM's public openness to going to the moon first.

As others said above 'Go somewhere'.  Mars is exciting but the moon is close, frequent launch windows.

Let's go there, and use the soil to make oxygen for rockets and metals for 3D printers!

Edit: EM is going to built the Mother of all Rockets, he is going to need paying customers with large payloads.

[clongton]

A stepping stone it is not.

A stepping stone in terms of architecture. Interplanetary transportation imo and with few exceptions should not begin and end on the earth's surface. We simply *cannot* be constantly lifting everything up that very steep and deep gravity well, and then trying to bring everything back through a very destructive atmosphere. That puts SEVERE design constraints on the spacecraft, making it inefficient in each environment to some degree. Transportation between interplanetary bodies should be done with spacecraft designed from the beginning to operate efficiently in the vacuum of interplanetary space. Transportation down to and up from a planetary surface should be done in spacecraft that are specifically designed for the purpose of landing on a planetary or satellite surface, which is *very* different from the design requirements for transport between interplanetary bodies.

The Apollo Command Module could not, for all practical purposes, be designed to traverse to and land on the moon (although literally dozens of designs to do just that were developed and discarded) and the LM could not be designed to return to the earth's surface thru the atmosphere. We are dealing with 2 very, very different environments and the spacecraft designed to operate in them must, of necessity, be specifically designed for those environments. Interplanetary spacecraft should not ever have to depart from and land on a surface (ITS is the wrong approach - heresy I know but there it is). And landers should not ever have to traverse interplanetary space as the working spacecraft.

Everybody wants to go somewhere right now - especially after spending decades going round and round and round. We are ALL impatient (including me). However all these worlds have been around for a very long time and they are not going anywhere else anytime soon. Rushing things just to get it done, no matter how exciting that may be, is not the right thing to do. Plan the work and then work the plan. Take the long view. What is the most efficient (not quickest) way to spread humanity into the solar system? What is the most sustainable way to spread humanity into the solar system? Taking shortcuts and getting it done (relatively) fast is certain to doom the entire effort to failure. We need to take our time and do it right the first time.

So yes, the moon IS a stepping stone. It needs to be the HUB of interplanetary travel. It needs to be the departure and return point for interplanetary travel. It needs to be the source for provisioning and outfitting interplanetary spacecraft. It needs to be the source for provisioning and supplying fledgling planetary bases and settlements. We don't need just a few bases on the moon. We need cities on the moon. It's not a stop-over place. It is an entire world just begging to be settled, exploited, developed and used. Just because it's hard is not a reason not to do it. If we cannot do this on the moon then we have absolutely no business going anywhere else to try it.