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SpaceX's Starship became NASA's ace in the hole to get to the moon by 2024
- fallingfrog 6y ago2024?? I’ll eat my shorts if that actually happens.
- bpodgursky 6y agoThe beauty of the Starship design is that if it works, it makes landing and taking off anywhere we want to go incredibly easy. You don't need a special lander module, complex docking manouvers, to replace disposable heat-shields, or anything. You land the Starship, and launch it again -- as is, no moving parts. Earth's atmosphere and gravity are much heavier and stronger than either the moon, Mars, or even Mercury. If you have the regulatory controls to re-enter and land on earth safely, it's trivial to do it on any of those destinations. It's still an incredibly hard challenge, and not might not work. But if SpaceX successfully reaches orbit and lands on earth with the Starship, landing on the moon and coming back is going to be an absolute cakewalk.
- stetrain 6y agoI think the issue is less about building such a rocket system, and more about actually testing and certifying it to NASA's modern standards for carrying humans. See the constantly stretching timeline for developing the Crew version of the Dragon capsule, despite the fact that SpaceX already had a working and tested rocket and pressurize capsule before they started on the crew version. I'm optimistic that SpaceX can make some rapid progress here, but I wouldn't bet on the timelines holding for any of these human spaceflight projects.
- PopeDotNinja 6y agoMars is hard. Enough atmosphere to burn you, but not to easily slow you down. Landing on the Earth and the Moon are both easier (as I understand it).
- m4rtink 6y agoIt depends - any atmosphere is a huge boon as long as your spacecraft can do aerobraking in any form. You can use it to change your orbit, capture into orbit from an interplanetary trajectory or even change the plane of your orbit as it was envisioned for some mission profiles of the Space shuttle or Dyna-Soar. There are nice tables at Project RHO illustration how much delta-v you can save by aerobreaking when traveling between Solar System bodies: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/appmissiontable.php http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/appmissiontable... You loose all of that for an airless body like the Moon. In this case it's not that big of an issue as moon is close & has a low gravity. If Mars was airless, it could be much more of an issue, as you are coming much more quickly from an interplanetary trajectory & there would be more gravity to handle during landing than on the Moon.
- Symmetry 6y agoIf you have enough delta-v to land on a hypothetical Mars without an atmosphere you've got enough to slow down for a gentle atmospheric entry that wouldn't burn you up. In terms of technical design creating a lightweight craft that can aerobrake to land on Mars is harder than the heavyweight craft that could do an airless powered landing. But once you factor in the booster requirements suddenly the atmosphere is making your job easier overall.
- marktangotango 6y agoIt's the revenge of 1950's pop sci fi; gleaming (stainless steel), tail landing rockets thundering around the solar system. A fully fueled Starship can get anywhere in the solar system fast. Refueling in orbit is the key.
- je42 6y agothe cool part is, eventhough it needs refueling in orbit it is still cheaper by an order of magnitude than all the other options... some guy on youtube calculated an upper estimate of the cost to about 2000$ per KG - if i remember correctly.
- moneytide 6y agoImagine dozens of consecutive unmanned launches boosted into orbit by the same 2-5 Boosters each with only a payload of fuel meant for the large tank of Starship.
- phkahler 6y ago>> You don't need a special lander module, complex docking manouvers, to replace disposable heat-shields, or anything. You land the Starship, and launch it again -- as is, no moving parts. Can anyone comment on how Falcon 9 knows where it is? Is GPS part of the game? Because they dont have that on the moon or Mars.
- api 6y agoDon't know about Falcon but I know with Dragon one mechanism is viewing the star field. On the Moon there's no atmosphere or erosion, so pattern recognition vs a known Lunar surface should work. Same should work to some extent on Mars.
- m4rtink 6y agoIIRC the recent Chinese landers used LIDAR and feature matching during the terminal phase. As for spacecraft navigation in general you are using star/sun/earth trackers (depending of where your spacecraft operates) to detect your orientation. This is important to correctly point solar panels to the sun, radiators, cameras and sensitive instruments away from the sun and directional cameras to Earth. As for detailed absolute position in space, AFAIK this is usually done by ultra sensitive radio signal ranging back on Earth. But other means could be used, eq. taking picture of your target or other bodies you can resolve and then tracking their magnitude/size and position, possibly over time, to calculate where exactly you are in the Solar System so that you are seeing what you are seeing.
- gpm 6y agoI don't know the full story, but I know that for detecting the ground during landing they use radar (which was why they made sure the two falcon heavy cores didn't land at the same time). Creating a gps (like) network on mars with a bunch of satellites might actually be an option before landing. SpaceX appears to be already developing that capability in the starlink satellites for the DOD [0]. [0] https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2020/04/06/the-pentagon-will-solicit-its-first-mesh-network-in-space-may-1/ https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2020/04/06/t...
- ccajas 6y agoIt's kind of a blessing in disguise that we live in the heaviest terrestrial planet in the solar system. It's like learning how to climb by starting with the most difficult mountain. You don't need as much energy to escape the gravity of the other planets and moons, and therefore can take less outlay of fuel with you for the return trip.
- xiphias2 6y agoIsn't a spaceship landing on the moon and coming back without human help the real achievement of the 21st century? Has it happened before? It should be harder to do it without humans than with humans in theory.
- londons_explore 6y agoWe have already sent robotic probes to the moon and brought back bits of soil [1]. We did so in the 20th century. There are certainly challenges to doing it with and without humans, but in my opinion, in today's world requiring much higher safety factors for human flight, a robotic mission is probably substantially easier. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_16 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_16
- xiphias2 6y agoApollo 11 was the previous year, that's why I thought that it's easier if a human can help with controlling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11
- skykooler 6y agoIt was easier at that point, because computers were in their infancy so it was helpful to have a human in the loop doing things the computers couldn't. Nowadays (and pretty much since the 80's) computers have been more than powerful enough to handle the task.
- boltzmannbrain 6y agoNo. You're missing the added complexities of supporting human life in spaceflight.
- AgloeDreams 6y agoIt's much easier to do it without people for a simple reason: Risk. You can do it without concern of getting it back so you can push the limits til you tune it out. If they had to land with people spaceX couldn't have ever figured out self-landing rockets. Imagine writing a program and you couldn't debug it fully because if it crashes someone would die. Autonomous spacecraft always were the 'easy' part, humans are the hard part.
- inamberclad 6y agoAce in the hole is a strong word. Starship's progress is breakneck by the standards of any aerospace program, but they've still got another booster (Super Heavy) to develop. Then they'll need multiple launches to get the vehicle into orbit and refueled before it can perform a TLI.
- kiba 6y agoSuperheavy is the easier project. Elon Musk is focusing on the hardest problem first.
- dint 6y agoI've seen a lot of people claim this. But it reminds me of what was said about the Falcon Heavy before its development got underway. That rocket turned out to be much more challenging than expected, despite being "just" an iteration on Falcon 9.[1] That said, I watch progress on Starship with interest and optimism. [1]https://www.defensedaily.com/developing-falcon-heavy-rocket-harder-expected-spacexs-musk-says/space/ https://www.defensedaily.com/developing-falcon-heavy-rocket-...
- kiba 6y agoI am simply referring to Elon Musk's claim. He got experience in both rocketry and automotive manufacturing. If he said it's hard, I believe him. He could be wrong yes, but I don't know anything about making cars or build rockets.
- woodandsteel 6y agoHeavy is easier than Starship because Heavy uses standard technology, but Starship is very innovative.
- rst 6y agoIt's the easier one to design -- but actually building it requires a production line that cranks out one of the most complicated rocket engines ever designed for cheap (it'll need over thirty engines in final configuration, though the first launch may be with "just" 20 or so).
- mikenew 6y ago> The Starship is NASA’s “ace in the hole” for landing people on the moon by 2024 because in its original configuration it needs neither the Orion nor the Space Launch System to take people and cargo to and from the lunar surface. The SLS situation is starting to get more and more awkward. The Falcon Heavy already has a lift capability that's about 2/3 of the SLS's Block 1 lift capability, and it's a real, flying rocket that is about an order of magnitude cheaper. And that's if it's flown expendable. If Starship starts flying then NASA will be pouring money into developing a booster that is worse in every way. They made a bit of a gesture towards "let's use Orion but forget about the booster for a while" [1], but then they realized they can't dock the Orion to a Falcon Heavy. So now, all 3 of the contracts they've selected for getting to the moon [2] are without SLS at all. Everyone knew SLS was more about jobs than it was about building a good rocket, and now it's becoming glaringly obvious. If SpaceX gets Starship flying I think we'll see SLS outright cancelled. 1. https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/what-is-going-on-with-nasas-space-launch-system-rocket/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/what-is-going-on-wit... 2. https://arstechnica.com/?p=1672180 https://arstechnica.com/?p=1672180
- kirrent 6y agoIt's hard to work out the actual cost of each SLS. Especially when you're trying to take development costs into account. The lowest sensible estimate I've seen is $3 billion, but if you amortise development costs over ten launches it could be higher than $5 billion a launch. A Falcon Heavy in expendable mode can be had for $150 million, and NASA paid no development costs. So, between 20 and 35ish times more expensive (assuming nothing much more goes wrong for SLS), and Falcon Heavy is already flying.
- mr_toad 6y agoJust one of the engines costs almost as much as a Falcon Heavy launch. https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/nasa-will-pay-a-staggering-146-million-for-each-sls-rocket-engine/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/nasa-will-pay-a-stag...
- Melting_Harps 6y ago> If SpaceX gets Starship flying I think we'll see SLS outright cancelled. One can only hope, I really wished Bezos had stepped up and fulfilled his promises/potential, but that's what you get when you confide in a guy that, consciously or not, looks and behaves more and more like Lex Luthor by the hour. I personally think any Lunar expeditions are a waste of time and nothing more than geo-politics harking back to the Cold War, this time with China, and will do more create division amongst Space exploration than cohesion. But it seems NASA is resolved to do it, so its being funded and several contractors have submitted their designs [1]. If they landed tomorrow on the moon I still would think Starlink delivering on its promise and SN4/SN5 doing a launch test would still be more impressive as its success can aid to unify a fragmented Species--polarized by petty distractions and affairs that mainly try to give credence to prolonging the Nation-State model. I'm entirely indifferent to the Moon as a habitat/colony for Humans, and aghast at the idea of a Lunar Gateway; then again that is the SLS project model that has prevailed. 1: https://spacenews.com/nasa-evaluation-sees-spacex-lunar-lander-as-innovative-but-risky/ https://spacenews.com/nasa-evaluation-sees-spacex-lunar-land...
- martythemaniak 6y agoThe Lunar Starship is pretty weird. If Orion is late, yes it can probably land people on the moon from the Earth's surface. But it can't come back without its heatshield. If you need it to come back with people as well, then it's no longer the Lunar Starship, but just regular Starship. Even if SLS slips, that's still probably quite a shift for all involved, unless SpaceX is already doing Apollo 8 style missions in 2 years. The answer might actually be "Delta Heavy". Orion can launch on Delta Heavy, so if Lunar Starship can get people back to LEO, they can land using Orion. But then, why not just use Starliner or Crew Dragon to get people to/from LEO, then use Lunar Starhip LEO-Moon-LEO?
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- jillesvangurp 6y agoI think increasingly, NASA (and by extension Boeing) needs to worry about SpaceX doing this without them; which I'm sure would be majorly embarrassing. It will sure make for some really awkward political debate about budgets in the next years. Starship is being designed for Mars trips. Landing on the moon should be well within it's design parameters and could probably be considered as a nice stepping stone for actually getting to Mars. Not to say it's going to be easy but it involves the kind of problem solving they are in any case doing and it seems they have a plan and a vehicle that looks like it is getting closer to working as advertised with every prototype they do (every 6 or so weeks). It's also intended to be reusable, mass produced, and cheap to operate and reuse. And to top off the list of arguments, Elon Musk likes to pull stunts like this.
- elcomet 6y agoI think Space X money comes in large part from NASA, so I don't see how they could do it without them.
- foolfoolz 6y agothere was just an article about how the russian space company roscomos can’t compete with spacex. the underlying reason is the defense department of russia is getting outspent by the american government
- bhk 6y agoCongress could cut out the middleman.
- chrisco255 6y agoDoesn't Space X need much of NASA's infrastructure to launch? Like Kennedy Space Center, etc?
- iso947 6y agoBoca Chica in south tr as is a private launch site for Starship. I suspect bass communication platforms might be needed, but not launch sites.
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