24 ms·

SpaceX wins contract to develop spacecraft to land astronauts on the moon

658 points by sbuttgereit 6y ago

_Microft 6y ago
This [0] is also an interesting piece. SpaceX won a contract for logistics services to the lunar gateway but not much has happened on that front yet. Here is an excerpt from the article: "NASA, in a statement provided to SpaceNews April 14, said it has yet to formally authorize SpaceX to proceed on the Gateway Logistics Services contract because the agency is studying the overall schedule of the Artemis lunar exploration program, of which development and use of the Gateway is just one part. “An agency internal Artemis review team is currently assessing the timing of various Artemis capabilities, including Gateway. The goal of this internal review is to evaluate the current Artemis program budget and timeline, and develop high-level plans that include content, schedule, and budgets for the program,” the agency stated.", from [0] Now this is pure speculation but they are not maybe working towards doing away with the Gateway and going directly to the moon instead? [0] https://spacenews.com/nasa-delays-starting-contract-with-spacex-for-gateway-cargo-services/ https://spacenews.com/nasa-delays-starting-contract-with-spa...
- avmich 6y ago
  > Now this is pure speculation but they are not maybe working towards doing away with the gateway and going directly to the moon instead? You don't assume the humanity doesn't need a Moon orbiting outpost, do you? Insisting that all materials and devices have to go to Moon or Earth with no intermediate point sounds, shall I say, interesting.
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    Spacecraft can dock with other spacecraft, they don't need a station to facilitate that. It's especially nonsensical now that Starship was chosen, since Starship is much larger than Gateway.
    - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
      Gateway could have coasted out in space for years though, like the the existing space station. starship won't be able to sit there forever. But that's an interesting point in general, will the starship 'habitable space' be bigger than gateway?
      - _Microft 6y ago
        Starship is huge, it is supposed to have up to 1000m³ of pressurized volume. That would be 10% more than the ISS currently has. Gateway should have at least 125m³ from what I saw on its Wikipedia page.
        avmich 6y ago
        A good Moon base should for sure be bigger than an orbital outpost; unless we have an awful lot of traffic there, on the orbit around the Moon... but we're not there yet. However, to completely avoid having a Moon orbiting facility would be to err to the other direction. Suppose, for example, you have an emergency on the Moon. If you need to fly to Earth, it's easier to meet an Earth-bound ship in the Moon orbit than to have that ship landed on Moon; reminding, SpaceX lunar ship isn't intended to fly to Earth, with good reasons. Or if you need an urgent delivery of something unique from the Earth, it's easier to deliver to the Moon orbiting outpost, rather than to have it with Moon landing capabilities. If you need delivery of materials from the Moon, a convenient place is to accumulate them in orbit; Earth's history of sea shipments suggests that. Of course there could be other reasons. Size of Starship doesn't really matter - Gateway could be smaller, and still quite useful.
        bryanlarsen 6y ago
        Gateway will be almost completely useless for this. Gateway is in a very odd orbit, a near rectilinear halo orbit. that NRHO spends most of its time a massive distance from the moon. Most of the time the Earth is closer to the moon than the gateway is. You can make a good argument for having a station in low lunar orbit, but NRHO is really silly. It was only chosen because it's all the Senate boondoggle SLS could reach. Edit: NRHO is only close to the moon once every 7 days, versus a low lunar orbit which orbits the moon in 2 hours.
  - KineticLensman 6y ago
    > Insisting that all materials and devices have to go to Moon or Earth with no intermediate point sounds, shall I say, interesting. Apollo did quite well without an intermediate point.
    - avmich 6y ago
      > Apollo did quite well without an intermediate point. Not particularly relevant. At the JFK planning moment, there were no plans, and hardly means, to fly to the Moon to stay. Different from what we have now. Today, "just" repeating "the small step" would be quite anticlimactic.
- Tepix 6y ago
  It seems unlikely. The lunar gateway is a cornerpiece of the international collaboration at the moon.
- skissane 6y ago
  I doubt they'll cancel Gateway. They have already awarded contracts for its manufacture and launch, and they have international partners (Europe, Japan, Canada) committed to manufacture and launch components as well. What might get cancelled however, is Dragon XL. I'm sure SpaceX is going to ask to change the contract to replace Dragon XL + Falcon Heavy with cargo Starship. Now that NASA is relying on Starship for HLS, it is going to be hard for them to say "no" to Starship for Gateway cargo as well.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  Gateway! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_(novel)
throwaway_isms 6y ago
Everyone thinks Elon was pumping Doge as he keeps saying Doge is going to the moon soon, he was, but this is what he was really talking about the entire time.
- schoen 6y ago
  I wonder if he will actually put some kind of cryptocurrency mascot aboard a lunar mission as a kind of follow-up to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk%27s_Tesla_Roadster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk%27s_Tesla_Roadster
  - cwkoss 6y ago
    He should fire an array of hundreds of impact resistant dogecoin cold wallets (maybe privkeys engraved in metal plates then surrounded by a balloon or similar) from lunar orbit to scatter bounties to explore the moon all over the surface. Put $1000 in each of them - if dogecoin price goes to the moon it could partially fund future lunar exploration missions.
    - throwaway_isms 6y ago
      Concurred! As we release extraordinary amounts of CO2 supporting cryptocurrency, we must consider the moon just watching us from afar feeling left out and begin missions to the moon to scatter garbage across the face of it, simultaneously the politicians can take credit for investing in future jobs for janitors to go to the moon and clean it all up.
    - orblivion 6y ago
      Create maps for future space pirates.
  - nickik 6y ago
    Don't for a second think that Doge to the moon was not literal. This is his whole thing, 'say crazy stuff on twitter', actually do it.
  - 6y ago
tectonic 6y ago
If true, this is a BIG deal.
- TheCraiggers 6y ago
  Perhaps you could say why it's such a big deal?
  - kiba 6y ago
    I expected NASA to choose 2 providers. I would have done that if I were in their shoes. Instead, they choose SpaceX alone. This also gives them major cash infusion for their Starship development program, which their Lunar lander will be based on. Basically, Lunar lander is a modified Starship designed to land on the Moon.
    - ThisIsTheWay 6y ago
      I also expected the competition between two (or more) contactors to be the choice, but with BO just now approaching human test flights, I can understand why they selected SpaceX to move forward if they could only fund one system.
      - Alupis 6y ago
        And what about ULA? They're a very serious contender here - have a human spaceflight program, and pretty strangely nobody ever seems to give them credit for the massive list of successful launches they have under their belt. Maybe because they're not run by Musk or Bezos? How strange to put so much faith in a few eccentric billionaires - one of which is clearly building rockets as a pet project.
        kiba 6y ago
        They have a human spaceflight program? That's news to me. Not to mention that they are owned by Lockheed and Boeing. Also, I have no faith in Blue Origin. They don't have much if any flight records.
kiba 6y ago
I have to say, I am completely skeptical of Blue Origin's ability to do anything in a reasonable amount of time and that they will amount of anything but Bezo's hobby. At least until they change their approaches. That said, it's a very secretive firm with an unknown amount of progress. I'll believe in Blue Origin when I see it.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  They don't seem to have the kind of drive that SpaceX has. And their secretiveness is not causing space fans to be enamored of them. SpaceX by contrast is quite open (with Elon often speculating on Twitter with fans about the cause of a test failure within minutes of it happening). That open approach is definitely delivering public mindshare that seems to be helping them.
  - generalizations 6y ago
    > seems to be helping them I love that SpaceX is so open, but I'm not sure what material 'help' that actually gives them. I mean, I doubt NASA gives Spacex special consideration because they're popular.
    - petertodd 6y ago
      The biggest help might be in attracting really talented employees willing to work for affordable wages, and keeping those employees excited enough to keep pushing hard.
    - Laremere 6y ago
      It's definitely a strong recruiting tool. SpaceX is known to work you harder for less money than other firms, but they can get people who are invested in the vision of the company. Also at this point there's been enough time for a high schooler to be inspired by SpaceX's first rocket booster landing, decided to go to college in a relevant field with the sole purpose of working at SpaceX, graduated, and gotten a job. I'm sure the popularity is also helping with demand for starling.
bryanlarsen 6y ago
The biggest news IMO is that there's only a single winner. There was a lot of pressure to make Commercial Crew a sole contact to Boeing, and it now appears that Boeing is going to deliver Starliner two years later than SpaceX delivered Crew Dragon. So going with two winners saved NASA's bacon. It's surprising to see them only choose a single winner here. Yes SpaceX may be considered a safe bet, but ten years ago it was Boeing who was considered the safe bet. Things change over years.
- kitsunesoba 6y ago
  It's risky to select just a single winner, but I can't help but think this is the appropriate response to Boeing's pressure. It sends a clear message that the typical "old space" tactics will no longer be tolerated and that if these companies want to remain in the game, it will need to be by way of their competitive merit.
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    To add to this point, I think we’re seeing a clear recognition that space travel and infrastructure is shifting out of the Defense sector and into the private sector.
    - greesil 6y ago
      Only because of Elon and team, and a huge brick of money that NASA gave them.
      - CydeWeys 6y ago
        Those huge bricks of money aren't going anywhere. SpaceX (or anyone else) aren't flying missions for the government for free!
      - briffle 6y ago
        Which doesn't seem as large, when you calculate it out in number of shuttle launches you could do with that cash.
_Microft 6y ago
The official announcement [0] will be broadcoast at http://www.nasa.gov/live http://www.nasa.gov/live at 4p.m. EDT (20:00 UTC). Livestream on Youtube is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6BqZrs0x4E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6BqZrs0x4E [0] also see: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-announce-selection-of-human-lander-for-artemis-moon-mission/ https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-announce-selectio...
AndrewGaspar 6y ago
Why in the title (not reflected in HN title) is it "Elon Musk's SpaceX" rather than just "SpaceX"? I could imagine the distinction being relevant if he had just taken the helm and this was the company taking some new direction because of it (e.g. "Patrick Gelsinger's Intel"), but it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense given Elon Musk has been the CEO since its founding. Even the subhead betrays how weird this journalistic formulation is: "The company beat out Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Dynetics, a defense contractor". Like, ok, who is the CEO of Dynetics? Is it just some "public person" standard - because readers will say "Oh, that guy!"? Or is it because they're the majority shareholders in their respective companies and they do this for any company with a singular majority stake? Just seems like a weird tic to me.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- FredPret 6y ago
  Because his name is like a magnet for clicks and eyeballs in exactly the way that “Patrick Gelsinger” isn’t
- kiba 6y ago
  Who's the CEO of Dynetic? I have no idea who they are. Jeff Bezo and Elon Musk are very well known public figures.
- skissane 6y ago
  It is trying to make the article meaningful to the average person (which most people here are a fair way off being.) The average person knows who Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are, because they are two of the richest men in the world–and Musk is prone to saying controversial things too, which helps stick him in people's minds. They might not remember who SpaceX are (even if they heard about Crew Dragon, they might just think that's NASA). They very likely have no idea who Blue Origin are. Musk and Bezos are household names, even among the hoi polloi. The average person has never heard of Patrick Gelsinger, or of David A. King (CEO of Dynetics)
- marsven_422 6y ago
aero-glide2 6y ago
Urgh, sole source contract. Maybe they should take some of that military budget for a second contractor. Starship is my favourite but this could reduce competition.
- jandrese 6y ago
  What? The announcement here was the result of three different bids from three different companies. The exact opposite of a sole source contract. This is textbook competitive bidding.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Right now there is no viable competition. That's what this means.
- ncallaway 6y ago
  This wasn't a sole source contract. This was the result of an extended bidding process that had many bids and multiple rounds of eliminations. As far as I can tell this was a fairly transparent, competitive bidding process, where the selected vendor was the one offering one of the lowest bids. It's also a firm fixed price contract, so while there may be concern about a failure to deliver we know that there won't be significant cost for overruns
4gotunameagain 6y ago
"In winning the $2.9 billion contract, SpaceX beat out Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, which had formed what it called a “national team” by partnering with aerospace giants Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper. SpaceX also won over Dynetics, a defense contractor based in Huntsville, Ala. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)" That's good PR, mentioning that Bezos owns WP when it is completely irrelevant, in order to foster a feeling of openness and honesty, while the real bomb in that sentence is that spaceX beat the team of the dinosaurs (Northrop, Lockheed) I don't know how I feel about any of this
- Alupis 6y ago
  How serious of an effort did Northrop and Lockheed put in though? Blue Origin isn't really a serious contender, and has very few actual flights under their belt. I have no idea, but I'd think the other two companies probably were mostly a "consultancy" role to provide clout behind BO. It's pretty perplexing BO would take point on such a major undertaking given their vast lack of experience.
  - jandrese 6y ago
    I kind of think that they put their name in there just to try to make life hard for SpaceX. Basically throwing in their lot with anybody but Elon.
  - vermontdevil 6y ago
    What actual flights? Not the New Shepard? That's a suborbital rocket. They haven't gone to space yet!
- skissane 6y ago
  > That's good PR, mentioning that Bezos owns WP when it is completely irrelevant, in order to foster a feeling of openness and honesty It is standard practice, when a newspaper reports on its owner, for it to point out the fact of ownership. It is considered good journalistic ethics. It is reminding the readers of the possibility that their reporting on their owner might be prone to bias, even if there is no sign of bias in any particular case. Here in Australia, every time The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney's broadsheet) or The Age (Melbourne's broadsheet) mentions Nine Entertainment (the Australian TV network, and more recently owner of those newspapers), they add a parenthetical aside ("the owner of this masthead"). Different publications, different country, same principle.
why_Mr_Anderson 6y ago
get ready for (random weird maneuver) all system nominal boooom looks like we have a slight issue in the (weird peice of hardware bolted to the capsule), oh well, we have to make adjustments in the next iteration oh and we should remove microphones from the crew module in the next flight, the screaming after explosion was very unpleasant edit: apparently my attempt to make a joke was too sophisticated for some people
- bpodgursky 6y ago
  You might be shocked to know how many rockets NASA blew up before they put people on them.
- BigMajestic 6y ago
  How many actual missions SpaceX failed?
  - toiletfuneral 6y ago
    how well does Tesla autopilot work?
- ben_bai 6y ago
  This is not the site for jokes, sarcasm, snark comments etc. I learned the hard way. Only serious facts and discussions...
  - why_Mr_Anderson 6y ago
    yeah...right... ;)
    - macintux 6y ago
      Yes, right.
  - skissane 6y ago
    People occasionally get away with jokes here if they are exceptionally clever – something which the grandparent comment was most definitely not.
maxharris 6y ago
It's obviously time to stop burning all that money on SLS, which costs over $2 billion per flight because it's not reusable. The sunk cost fallacy only hurts more the longer you run with it.
- Alupis 6y ago
  Is this even a problem anymore? I mean, we just threw hundreds of billions behind all sorts of congress-critter pet projects - what's $10 billion (or even $100 billion) for a few moon landing missions?
  - nexuist 6y ago
    It's important in the context of NASA's budget, for which $10b is a pretty significant hit which could be going to objectively more useful things.
- kilroy123 6y ago
  Sure, but sadly that's not up to NASA. Congress insists on forcing them to keep this bloated jobs program in place.
- bluthru 6y ago
  It makes sense to use up the old RS-25s but I'm sure SLS is not as efficient as it could be.
hermitsings 6y ago
Y'know Washington Post tries too hard to show that its independent journalism. One time I saw it saying some -ve about Amazon.
bryanlarsen 6y ago
More information: "Blue Origin's Total Evaluated Price was significantly higher than [SpaceX's], followed by Dynetics' Total Evaluated Price, which was significantly higher than Blue Origin's." https://twitter.com/wapodavenport/status/1383125840184115203 https://twitter.com/wapodavenport/status/1383125840184115203
MisterBiggs 6y ago
Considering SpaceX got by far the smallest award for the initial bid [0], it's great to see NASA choosing something new in an industry where entrenchment is so prevalent. It's a big disappointment that we haven't seen more from Blue Origin since the initial bid. Hopefully, the established players will take a step back and understand why SpaceX is completely dominating everything they do in this space. Starship doesn't fit the original mission very well, so I wonder if this could be the start of a pretty big (and in my opinion necessary) overhaul for Artemis. I can't find the document, but I know NASA was pretty set on preferably a 3 but possibly a 2 stage lander and weren't sold on Starships reusability and using the same vehicle for cargo and human missions. Starship is far more capable than anything else out or even anything on a drawing board, and NASA accepting it for human flights to the Moon signals a lot of confidence in SpaceX and Starship. Hopefully, NASA uses it to its fullest potential. - [0] https://spacenews.com/nasa-selects-three-companies-for-human-landing-system-awards/ https://spacenews.com/nasa-selects-three-companies-for-human...
- kiba 6y ago
  They are developing a lunar variant so that they can land on the moon.
  - MisterBiggs 6y ago
    Yes early Starships for Artemis were planned to be one way and maximize cargo payload to the Moon but that was before SpaceX was accepted for crewed Artemis missions.
themgt 6y ago
This is really huge news. Starship has in about 18 months gone from a Elon standing next to a steel grain silo duct-taped into the shape of a rocket, to all the eggs in NASA's moon basket. The thing I kept thinking - and I have to believe was considered within NASA - is given the rapid progress SpaceX has been making along with the delays in Congressional funding, SLS, BlueOrigin's other projects etc ... if NASA hadn't selected SpaceX there was at least some chance they'd go ahead and do their own private Moon landing mission before NASA's, a massive egg-on-face moment. There are still major risks with the Starship program so I don't think anyone should be 100% confident they can pull this off, but the massive side benefit is if they do NASA will have proven out a generic system, fully reusable and with orbital refueling, that can with minimal modification cost-effectively send humans to Mars and much of the rest of the solar system as well. A Model T or 737 in space. The original Artemis plan never made much sense as a Mars "proof-of-concept", but it actually does now. If at some point say 2025, NASA says to the President "we can get the first human on Mars in 4 years for $15 billion" I have to imagine any American president being eager to sign their name on that accomplishment and give the JFK speech, "We choose to go to Mars in this decade, not because it is easy, but because it is hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win" To me that's the real takeaway here: this is implicitly a huge NASA bet not just on the Moon, but Mars and the rest of the solar system. Finally.
- fukmbas 6y ago
  Let's be honest. This was a gentleman's agreement that happened on a golf course, nothing else. Tax payers are lining the pockets of musk instead of investing in our own government services.
- jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 6y ago
  > The original Artemis plan never made much sense as a Mars "proof-of-concept", but it actually does now. IIRC, in the Iliad Artemis helps out Ares (which is kinda the Greek version of Mars). Probably just a coincidence (I'm sure Artemis was chosen because she's Apollo's sister), but fun nonetheless.
cryptoz 6y ago
There's a new render of Starship on Moon (edit), I guess from the presentation happening now. https://twitter.com/nextspaceflight/status/1383150867948261376 https://twitter.com/nextspaceflight/status/13831508679482613...
- jccooper 6y ago
  Looks like the moon to me.
  - cryptoz 6y ago
    Whoops, that's what I meant! Thanks!
bryanlarsen 6y ago
More news from livestream: this contract covers two landings. A test landing and a single crewed landing. A new competition is opening immediately for subsequent landings. SpaceX will have a huge leg up on the competition for the next competition, but if the Senate ponies up with more cash we might get two companies selected for the next contract like was desired for this one.
- NotSammyHagar 6y ago
  That seems pretty unlikely. "We did it twice, want to buy a few more landings?" vs "give us a cost plus contract, we haven't done it once, also like commerical crew, give us significantly more than the people that already did it". I'd bet on spacex. Who wouldn't?
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    Governments often pay more for multi-sourcing things. It’s just safer from an overall risk mitigation scenario.
WalterBright 6y ago
I wish I could buy stock in SpaceX. I don't even care if it goes bust, I just want to be in on it! (I bought stock in Tesla as a sort of consolation prize because I couldn't buy SpaceX.)
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Maybe it's an American thing I don't get or just the way I was raised but even though I do believe in SpaceX as a company they are still just that to me i.e. the fact that some people treat them like a sports team is a little jarring to me. Wanting to buy stock is completely understandable, but why do SpaceX fans on Reddit collect lists of evidence that musk is really in charge of engineering for example? I wouldn't stop them from doing it, but at the end of the day this is Mr "pedo guy" they're talking about so the personality cult is odd.
  - Strom 6y ago
    It's definitely not an American thing. People idolize other people and groups of people all over the world. The "pedo guy" story is just noise. Elon's fans are much more interested in the positive things he has done and consider Elon to be a significant net positive character.
  - kiba 6y ago
    Maybe it's an American thing I don't get or just the way I was raised but even though I do believe in SpaceX as a company they are still just that to me i.e. the fact that some people treat them like a sports team is a little jarring to me. Why would you believe that it's just a business? Rocketry is a really shitty business to get in the first place. Nobody does it unless they're crazy. Wanting to buy stock is completely understandable, but why do SpaceX fans on Reddit collect lists of evidence that musk is really in charge of engineering for example? Because critics said he's not an engineer? Mr "pedo guy" they're talking about so the personality cult is odd. There may be a personalty cult, which is surely unwarranted even for the most saintly of individual, but why the focus on that instead of what SpaceX is doing and their goals?
  - lutorm 6y ago
elihu 6y ago
I wonder if they'll use the belly-flop maneuver to land the astronauts back on Earth, or if the astronauts will depart the ship in a more traditional capsule and land separately from the Starship? I guess they have quite a while to figure out the details, and if the belly flop maneuver isn't deemed to be safe enough by the time the mission is ready, it shouldn't be that big a deal to take a more conservative approach.
- nickik 6y ago
  This is already known. Austronauts launch on SLS/Orion and transfer to moon orbit, transfer to Lunar Gateway or Starship and then land on the moon. Starship launches from surface back to lunar orbit, gives astronauts over to Orion and Orion will then land on earth. Lunar Starship will stay in Lunar orbit and potentially be reusable or just land on the moon to start building a Basecamp.
  - elihu 6y ago
    Okay, that makes sense to do a (mostly) one-way Starship trip. Rockets are expensive, but not so much so that it wouldn't be worth it be able to haul more cargo instead of more fuel, and maybe have a nice big stainless steel tube on the moon or in the general vicinity, that could be used for all sorts of things.
- aynyc 6y ago
  Why can’t they just dock with ISS and use the crew dragon to bring the astronauts home?
  - gnzoidberg 6y ago
    Too expensive to brake to LEO, and a bazillion failure modes.
scottrogowski 6y ago
I have a genuine curiousity (because I can't seem to find it in the news reports). The contract is going to the starship design. What exactly are they planning to take that requires such a large ship? The lunar landers were tiny because the Moon has such a small gravity well. For that payload capacity, I assume you would have most or all of a habitable lunar base. Edit: There is this: https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2020/10/28/lunar-living-nasas-artemis-base-camp-concept/ https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2020/10/28/lunar-living-nasas.... I wonder whether NASA will now try to include it on one of the two missions.
- skissane 6y ago
  > What exactly are they planning to take that requires such a large ship? NASA didn't ask for such a big ship, and would have accepted a smaller one. But if SpaceX bids a big ship, they can't say "no" to it just because it is bigger than they thought they needed. For the first few landings they probably won't even use most of the capacity. But I'm sure NASA will get to work coming up with ideas of things to do with it. One option is to have a much bigger crew. Another option is cargo such as lunar rovers, lunar base modules, ISRU demonstrators, etc. (I wonder if SpaceX will design a slightly different variant optimised for lunar surface cargo delivery.)
  - robbiep 6y ago
    They definitely won’t use most of the capacity because they can’t deliver/return even a tiny percentage of it using star liner!
    - skissane 6y ago
      You mean Orion, not Starliner. For inbound cargo, they definitely can use it to its full cargo capacity, since the cargo can be launched with it from Earth. For crew, yes for now the limiting factor is Orion – Orion can only take a crew of four, so that's a maximum number of people you can take onboard, without resorting to multiple flights (infeasible given the cost of the SLS+Orion stack) However, once Starship is crew-rated for launch and re-entry, the number of possible crew is going to increase – I don't know what the limit is, but at least 10, maybe even 20. (Orion is initially also a limiting factor for returning cargo. However, they could use a cargo Starship, provided the returning cargo can be transferred to the cargo Starship in lunar orbit. This may happen before crew-rating Starship for launch and re-entry does.)
hourislate 6y ago
I always thought that if NASA chose another company, by the time they sent astronauts back to the moon they would be greeted by a small group of SpaceX colonists. There really is no competition at this point. Bezos is a joke when it comes to the Space Race in my opinion, he should stick to what he's amazing at like selling groceries and things on Amazon.
- edgyquant 6y ago
  > Bezos is a joke when it comes to the Space Race in my opinion, he should stick to what he's amazing at like selling groceries and things on Amazon. I seriously disagree. I think Bezos is on a different trajectory than SpaceX and isn’t as concerned with quick iterations. He gets a lot of hate from Elon fanboys but I think he knows exactly what he’s doing and can afford to play the long game.
  - kiba 6y ago
    SpaceX is the hare in this story, only it's not stopping to let Boeing catch up. Blue Origin is just a company that's burning money in Bezo's pocket.
    - edgyquant 6y ago
      I believe in ten years this comment will be laughable, but as it stands right now we’ll have to agree to disagree.
      - nickik 6y ago
        Funny I remember people telling me this like 6 years ago how BO would soon dominate. Bezos was actually concerned about quick iteration. They had a smaller rocket planned but because of SpaceX success they wanted to 1-up SpaceX and build an even bigger rocket. So they wet with the New Glenn design that is now public. That of course went away from their 'step by step' approach but Bezos wanted to 1-up Musk. However they announced it and 2 years later realized that they were hopelessly behind schedule so they waited until the last possible second to move it back by 3 years. The problem is of course that SpaceX already has a bigger rocket, Falcon Heavy. SpaceX next generation rocket is making far faster progress then New Glenn and is far more capable. New Glenn will be incredibly expensive and if they don't land it on the first try, they are gone have serious issues because they can't build these rockets very fast. Even if they manage to hit their launch date, their flight rate will be incredibly low for years. At this point, no matter what kind of money Blue has, they can not match SpaceX in team and ability to invest in future technology. Elon started with less 100M and built a 74 billion market cap company out of it that is dominating space industry and is only increasing it dominance over time. They dominate the launch market, the are running away with sat internet, they have every possible NASA service contract, they have been selected as a military launch provider and they are even starting to make inroads into building military sats. At the same time Bezos has thrown 5-10 billion $ into a company that is worth very little and has no clear path to actually making money anytime soon. In fact, its hard to see how they would ever make that money back. If you want to make the argument that in 10 years BO is some juggernaut, I would seriously want an explanation on how they are gone do it.
bane 6y ago
My bet is that in the next couple of years we're going to see SpaceX start to move into in-orbit infrastructure: habitats, refueling depots, servicing stations, orbital assembly yards and so on, all the way up to massive mining systems. Having infrastructure in orbit for say, refueling, reduces potential costs for certain space activities significantly and nobody else really has a good story for lifting the mass needed to build that stuff. Heck, spent Starships might even make decent core components for some of these facilities. Why deorbit them and shipbreak them after their serviceable lifespan when they could be kept up in orbit and comfortably house a dozen humans?
- fastball 6y ago
  Yeah, I think there are a lot of people that are missing how much of a perfect bottleneck launch capacity is. Lots of companies putting the proverbial cart before the horse, saying "I'm not gonna be the space launch company, I'm gonna be the space hotel company" – but that's not necessarily how things are going to play out in space. In fact, we've already seen this happen with "internet satellite constellation companies". Sure, SpaceX could've just sat back and launched OneWeb's sats for them, but instead they built Starlink and they'll probably eat OneWeb's lunch. With regards to using Starships as infrastructure, I actually saw a pretty cool idea[1], where you attach either two Starships together (or many to some other central structure) via cable/structure and use thrust to spin up around the center of mass, creating artificial gravity through centripetal force. The linked YouTube video talks about going to Mars/etc with this, but no reason it couldn't be a space station in orbit around earth. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CRiJTJikjk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CRiJTJikjk
CynicusRex 6y ago
This rubs me the wrong way, but it's a biased feeling solely because of Elon Musk. I feel like if Musk was ousted from both Tesla and SpaceX these companies would be less tainted. Elon is becoming like Howard Hughes: completely nuts. The nonsense he's spouting and lies he's selling is the complete antithesis to what a virtuous scientist or engineer should strive for, unfortunately he's just a nasty businessman. I can't quite recall where my irritation with him began: the horrendous apocalypse cybertruck, a podcast with Joe Rogan where his laughs seemed totally fake and creepy, his musings with Kanye, defending Amber Heard, calling someone a pedo while having millions of followers, manipulation the market, full self-driving false promises, claiming he founded Tesla, pretending Neuralink's latest demo was novel, Las Vegas' ridiculous redundant tunnel, the list goes on. I don't like the guy any more.
- robertlagrant 6y ago
  Sounds as though you've gone out of your way to memorise his flaws (the first 3 and last 1 not being flaws, really).
  - CynicusRex 6y ago
    I said I was biased. Anyway, I just hoped he was a Tesla, but he's just another Edison. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqyXvMrQDk8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqyXvMrQDk8.
    - robertlagrant 6y ago
      Yeah I was commenting on the things you listed as causing your bias.
skissane 6y ago
Here's the official source selection statement by NASA if anyone wants to read it: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/option-a-source-selection-statement-final.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/option-...
dxxvi 6y ago
I think among all the people commenting here, I'm the only person who doesn't pay for washingtonpost. I'm surprised that the paywal business model works.
ck2 6y ago
Won't happen in my lifetime but how long do you figure until you can look up and realize there are millionaires racing teslas on the moon every weekend (like yacht races)? 30 years? 40? Definitely under 50. Don't get me wrong as I love the science of it all but what do we realistically expect to come out of being able to go to the moon more easily in the near future? I know it's a stepping stone but it has to support itself the first hundred years or two.
CraftingLinks 6y ago
So the US won't land on the moon any time soon then.
TeeMassive 6y ago
I wonder if there are plans to build rockets in orbit. Shipping things in small incremental steps that distributes risk plus the obvious advantages of weightlessness when it comes to heavy infrastructures are maybe the way to go for the future?
paulintrognon 6y ago
Genuine question: why are we going back to the moon? Is it really the best way to use public money? What are the gains?
- fastball 6y ago
  Space has limitless potential and moon is the obvious place to start if you're serious about reaching for the stars. Some would argue that Mars is a better first step, but either way the idea is the same.
- tim333 6y ago
  It's not a huge amount of public money here $2.9bn and it helps develop the Starship rocket which has a lot of potential applications.
- aeternum 6y ago
  Humans will go extinct if we do not leave the earth, if not by an asteroid then it is guaranteed that the sun will eventually expand and burn up the earth. The survival of humanity depends on figuring this out, why put it off?
mvirani 6y ago
Funny how washington post (owned by Bezos) had to share a story about losing a contract to SpaceX.
Isinlor 6y ago
It's worth reminding ourselves that space exploration is not high on humanity priorities list. It's somewhere around lipstick market worth of ~10B dollar per year.

658 points by sbuttgereit 6y ago

This [0] is also an interesting piece. SpaceX won a contract for logistics services to the lunar gateway but not much has happened on that front yet. Here is an excerpt from the article: "NASA, in a statement provided to SpaceNews April 14, said it has yet to formally authorize SpaceX to proceed on the Gateway Logistics Services contract because the agency is studying the overall schedule of the Artemis lunar exploration program, of which development and use of the Gateway is just one part. “An agency internal Artemis review team is currently assessing the timing of various Artemis capabilities, including Gateway. The goal of this internal review is to evaluate the current Artemis program budget and timeline, and develop high-level plans that include content, schedule, and budgets for the program,” the agency stated.", from [0] Now this is pure speculation but they are not maybe working towards doing away with the Gateway and going directly to the moon instead? [0] https://spacenews.com/nasa-delays-starting-contract-with-spacex-for-gateway-cargo-services/ https://spacenews.com/nasa-delays-starting-contract-with-spa...

avmich 6y ago
> Now this is pure speculation but they are not maybe working towards doing away with the gateway and going directly to the moon instead? You don't assume the humanity doesn't need a Moon orbiting outpost, do you? Insisting that all materials and devices have to go to Moon or Earth with no intermediate point sounds, shall I say, interesting.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  Spacecraft can dock with other spacecraft, they don't need a station to facilitate that. It's especially nonsensical now that Starship was chosen, since Starship is much larger than Gateway.
  - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
    Gateway could have coasted out in space for years though, like the the existing space station. starship won't be able to sit there forever. But that's an interesting point in general, will the starship 'habitable space' be bigger than gateway?
    - _Microft 6y ago
      Starship is huge, it is supposed to have up to 1000m³ of pressurized volume. That would be 10% more than the ISS currently has. Gateway should have at least 125m³ from what I saw on its Wikipedia page.
      - avmich 6y ago
        A good Moon base should for sure be bigger than an orbital outpost; unless we have an awful lot of traffic there, on the orbit around the Moon... but we're not there yet. However, to completely avoid having a Moon orbiting facility would be to err to the other direction. Suppose, for example, you have an emergency on the Moon. If you need to fly to Earth, it's easier to meet an Earth-bound ship in the Moon orbit than to have that ship landed on Moon; reminding, SpaceX lunar ship isn't intended to fly to Earth, with good reasons. Or if you need an urgent delivery of something unique from the Earth, it's easier to deliver to the Moon orbiting outpost, rather than to have it with Moon landing capabilities. If you need delivery of materials from the Moon, a convenient place is to accumulate them in orbit; Earth's history of sea shipments suggests that. Of course there could be other reasons. Size of Starship doesn't really matter - Gateway could be smaller, and still quite useful.
        bryanlarsen 6y ago
        Gateway will be almost completely useless for this. Gateway is in a very odd orbit, a near rectilinear halo orbit. that NRHO spends most of its time a massive distance from the moon. Most of the time the Earth is closer to the moon than the gateway is. You can make a good argument for having a station in low lunar orbit, but NRHO is really silly. It was only chosen because it's all the Senate boondoggle SLS could reach. Edit: NRHO is only close to the moon once every 7 days, versus a low lunar orbit which orbits the moon in 2 hours.
- KineticLensman 6y ago
  > Insisting that all materials and devices have to go to Moon or Earth with no intermediate point sounds, shall I say, interesting. Apollo did quite well without an intermediate point.
  - avmich 6y ago
    > Apollo did quite well without an intermediate point. Not particularly relevant. At the JFK planning moment, there were no plans, and hardly means, to fly to the Moon to stay. Different from what we have now. Today, "just" repeating "the small step" would be quite anticlimactic.
Tepix 6y ago
It seems unlikely. The lunar gateway is a cornerpiece of the international collaboration at the moon.
skissane 6y ago
I doubt they'll cancel Gateway. They have already awarded contracts for its manufacture and launch, and they have international partners (Europe, Japan, Canada) committed to manufacture and launch components as well. What might get cancelled however, is Dragon XL. I'm sure SpaceX is going to ask to change the contract to replace Dragon XL + Falcon Heavy with cargo Starship. Now that NASA is relying on Starship for HLS, it is going to be hard for them to say "no" to Starship for Gateway cargo as well.
perl4ever 6y ago
Gateway! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_(novel)

throwaway_isms 6y ago

Everyone thinks Elon was pumping Doge as he keeps saying Doge is going to the moon soon, he was, but this is what he was really talking about the entire time.

schoen 6y ago
I wonder if he will actually put some kind of cryptocurrency mascot aboard a lunar mission as a kind of follow-up to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk%27s_Tesla_Roadster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk%27s_Tesla_Roadster
- cwkoss 6y ago
  He should fire an array of hundreds of impact resistant dogecoin cold wallets (maybe privkeys engraved in metal plates then surrounded by a balloon or similar) from lunar orbit to scatter bounties to explore the moon all over the surface. Put $1000 in each of them - if dogecoin price goes to the moon it could partially fund future lunar exploration missions.
  - throwaway_isms 6y ago
    Concurred! As we release extraordinary amounts of CO2 supporting cryptocurrency, we must consider the moon just watching us from afar feeling left out and begin missions to the moon to scatter garbage across the face of it, simultaneously the politicians can take credit for investing in future jobs for janitors to go to the moon and clean it all up.
  - orblivion 6y ago
    Create maps for future space pirates.
- nickik 6y ago
  Don't for a second think that Doge to the moon was not literal. This is his whole thing, 'say crazy stuff on twitter', actually do it.
- 6y ago

tectonic 6y ago

If true, this is a BIG deal.

TheCraiggers 6y ago
Perhaps you could say why it's such a big deal?
- kiba 6y ago
  I expected NASA to choose 2 providers. I would have done that if I were in their shoes. Instead, they choose SpaceX alone. This also gives them major cash infusion for their Starship development program, which their Lunar lander will be based on. Basically, Lunar lander is a modified Starship designed to land on the Moon.
  - ThisIsTheWay 6y ago
    I also expected the competition between two (or more) contactors to be the choice, but with BO just now approaching human test flights, I can understand why they selected SpaceX to move forward if they could only fund one system.
    - Alupis 6y ago
      And what about ULA? They're a very serious contender here - have a human spaceflight program, and pretty strangely nobody ever seems to give them credit for the massive list of successful launches they have under their belt. Maybe because they're not run by Musk or Bezos? How strange to put so much faith in a few eccentric billionaires - one of which is clearly building rockets as a pet project.
      - kiba 6y ago
        They have a human spaceflight program? That's news to me. Not to mention that they are owned by Lockheed and Boeing. Also, I have no faith in Blue Origin. They don't have much if any flight records.

kiba 6y ago

I have to say, I am completely skeptical of Blue Origin's ability to do anything in a reasonable amount of time and that they will amount of anything but Bezo's hobby. At least until they change their approaches. That said, it's a very secretive firm with an unknown amount of progress. I'll believe in Blue Origin when I see it.

CydeWeys 6y ago
They don't seem to have the kind of drive that SpaceX has. And their secretiveness is not causing space fans to be enamored of them. SpaceX by contrast is quite open (with Elon often speculating on Twitter with fans about the cause of a test failure within minutes of it happening). That open approach is definitely delivering public mindshare that seems to be helping them.
- generalizations 6y ago
  > seems to be helping them I love that SpaceX is so open, but I'm not sure what material 'help' that actually gives them. I mean, I doubt NASA gives Spacex special consideration because they're popular.
  - petertodd 6y ago
    The biggest help might be in attracting really talented employees willing to work for affordable wages, and keeping those employees excited enough to keep pushing hard.
  - Laremere 6y ago
    It's definitely a strong recruiting tool. SpaceX is known to work you harder for less money than other firms, but they can get people who are invested in the vision of the company. Also at this point there's been enough time for a high schooler to be inspired by SpaceX's first rocket booster landing, decided to go to college in a relevant field with the sole purpose of working at SpaceX, graduated, and gotten a job. I'm sure the popularity is also helping with demand for starling.

bryanlarsen 6y ago

The biggest news IMO is that there's only a single winner. There was a lot of pressure to make Commercial Crew a sole contact to Boeing, and it now appears that Boeing is going to deliver Starliner two years later than SpaceX delivered Crew Dragon. So going with two winners saved NASA's bacon. It's surprising to see them only choose a single winner here. Yes SpaceX may be considered a safe bet, but ten years ago it was Boeing who was considered the safe bet. Things change over years.

kitsunesoba 6y ago
It's risky to select just a single winner, but I can't help but think this is the appropriate response to Boeing's pressure. It sends a clear message that the typical "old space" tactics will no longer be tolerated and that if these companies want to remain in the game, it will need to be by way of their competitive merit.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  To add to this point, I think we’re seeing a clear recognition that space travel and infrastructure is shifting out of the Defense sector and into the private sector.
  - greesil 6y ago
    Only because of Elon and team, and a huge brick of money that NASA gave them.
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      Those huge bricks of money aren't going anywhere. SpaceX (or anyone else) aren't flying missions for the government for free!
    - briffle 6y ago
      Which doesn't seem as large, when you calculate it out in number of shuttle launches you could do with that cash.

_Microft 6y ago

The official announcement [0] will be broadcoast at http://www.nasa.gov/live http://www.nasa.gov/live at 4p.m. EDT (20:00 UTC). Livestream on Youtube is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6BqZrs0x4E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6BqZrs0x4E [0] also see: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-announce-selection-of-human-lander-for-artemis-moon-mission/ https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-announce-selectio...

AndrewGaspar 6y ago

Why in the title (not reflected in HN title) is it "Elon Musk's SpaceX" rather than just "SpaceX"? I could imagine the distinction being relevant if he had just taken the helm and this was the company taking some new direction because of it (e.g. "Patrick Gelsinger's Intel"), but it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense given Elon Musk has been the CEO since its founding. Even the subhead betrays how weird this journalistic formulation is: "The company beat out Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Dynetics, a defense contractor". Like, ok, who is the CEO of Dynetics? Is it just some "public person" standard - because readers will say "Oh, that guy!"? Or is it because they're the majority shareholders in their respective companies and they do this for any company with a singular majority stake? Just seems like a weird tic to me.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
FredPret 6y ago
Because his name is like a magnet for clicks and eyeballs in exactly the way that “Patrick Gelsinger” isn’t
kiba 6y ago
Who's the CEO of Dynetic? I have no idea who they are. Jeff Bezo and Elon Musk are very well known public figures.
skissane 6y ago
It is trying to make the article meaningful to the average person (which most people here are a fair way off being.) The average person knows who Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are, because they are two of the richest men in the world–and Musk is prone to saying controversial things too, which helps stick him in people's minds. They might not remember who SpaceX are (even if they heard about Crew Dragon, they might just think that's NASA). They very likely have no idea who Blue Origin are. Musk and Bezos are household names, even among the hoi polloi. The average person has never heard of Patrick Gelsinger, or of David A. King (CEO of Dynetics)
marsven_422 6y ago

aero-glide2 6y ago

Urgh, sole source contract. Maybe they should take some of that military budget for a second contractor. Starship is my favourite but this could reduce competition.

jandrese 6y ago
What? The announcement here was the result of three different bids from three different companies. The exact opposite of a sole source contract. This is textbook competitive bidding.
jacquesm 6y ago
Right now there is no viable competition. That's what this means.
ncallaway 6y ago
This wasn't a sole source contract. This was the result of an extended bidding process that had many bids and multiple rounds of eliminations. As far as I can tell this was a fairly transparent, competitive bidding process, where the selected vendor was the one offering one of the lowest bids. It's also a firm fixed price contract, so while there may be concern about a failure to deliver we know that there won't be significant cost for overruns

4gotunameagain 6y ago

"In winning the $2.9 billion contract, SpaceX beat out Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, which had formed what it called a “national team” by partnering with aerospace giants Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper. SpaceX also won over Dynetics, a defense contractor based in Huntsville, Ala. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)" That's good PR, mentioning that Bezos owns WP when it is completely irrelevant, in order to foster a feeling of openness and honesty, while the real bomb in that sentence is that spaceX beat the team of the dinosaurs (Northrop, Lockheed) I don't know how I feel about any of this

Alupis 6y ago
How serious of an effort did Northrop and Lockheed put in though? Blue Origin isn't really a serious contender, and has very few actual flights under their belt. I have no idea, but I'd think the other two companies probably were mostly a "consultancy" role to provide clout behind BO. It's pretty perplexing BO would take point on such a major undertaking given their vast lack of experience.
- jandrese 6y ago
  I kind of think that they put their name in there just to try to make life hard for SpaceX. Basically throwing in their lot with anybody but Elon.
- vermontdevil 6y ago
  What actual flights? Not the New Shepard? That's a suborbital rocket. They haven't gone to space yet!
skissane 6y ago
> That's good PR, mentioning that Bezos owns WP when it is completely irrelevant, in order to foster a feeling of openness and honesty It is standard practice, when a newspaper reports on its owner, for it to point out the fact of ownership. It is considered good journalistic ethics. It is reminding the readers of the possibility that their reporting on their owner might be prone to bias, even if there is no sign of bias in any particular case. Here in Australia, every time The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney's broadsheet) or The Age (Melbourne's broadsheet) mentions Nine Entertainment (the Australian TV network, and more recently owner of those newspapers), they add a parenthetical aside ("the owner of this masthead"). Different publications, different country, same principle.

why_Mr_Anderson 6y ago

get ready for (random weird maneuver) all system nominal boooom looks like we have a slight issue in the (weird peice of hardware bolted to the capsule), oh well, we have to make adjustments in the next iteration oh and we should remove microphones from the crew module in the next flight, the screaming after explosion was very unpleasant edit: apparently my attempt to make a joke was too sophisticated for some people

bpodgursky 6y ago
You might be shocked to know how many rockets NASA blew up before they put people on them.
BigMajestic 6y ago
How many actual missions SpaceX failed?
- toiletfuneral 6y ago
  how well does Tesla autopilot work?
ben_bai 6y ago
This is not the site for jokes, sarcasm, snark comments etc. I learned the hard way. Only serious facts and discussions...
- why_Mr_Anderson 6y ago
  yeah...right... ;)
  - macintux 6y ago
    Yes, right.
- skissane 6y ago
  People occasionally get away with jokes here if they are exceptionally clever – something which the grandparent comment was most definitely not.

maxharris 6y ago

It's obviously time to stop burning all that money on SLS, which costs over $2 billion per flight because it's not reusable. The sunk cost fallacy only hurts more the longer you run with it.

Alupis 6y ago
Is this even a problem anymore? I mean, we just threw hundreds of billions behind all sorts of congress-critter pet projects - what's $10 billion (or even $100 billion) for a few moon landing missions?
- nexuist 6y ago
  It's important in the context of NASA's budget, for which $10b is a pretty significant hit which could be going to objectively more useful things.
kilroy123 6y ago
Sure, but sadly that's not up to NASA. Congress insists on forcing them to keep this bloated jobs program in place.
bluthru 6y ago
It makes sense to use up the old RS-25s but I'm sure SLS is not as efficient as it could be.

hermitsings 6y ago

Y'know Washington Post tries too hard to show that its independent journalism. One time I saw it saying some -ve about Amazon.

bryanlarsen 6y ago

More information: "Blue Origin's Total Evaluated Price was significantly higher than [SpaceX's], followed by Dynetics' Total Evaluated Price, which was significantly higher than Blue Origin's." https://twitter.com/wapodavenport/status/1383125840184115203 https://twitter.com/wapodavenport/status/1383125840184115203

MisterBiggs 6y ago

Considering SpaceX got by far the smallest award for the initial bid [0], it's great to see NASA choosing something new in an industry where entrenchment is so prevalent. It's a big disappointment that we haven't seen more from Blue Origin since the initial bid. Hopefully, the established players will take a step back and understand why SpaceX is completely dominating everything they do in this space. Starship doesn't fit the original mission very well, so I wonder if this could be the start of a pretty big (and in my opinion necessary) overhaul for Artemis. I can't find the document, but I know NASA was pretty set on preferably a 3 but possibly a 2 stage lander and weren't sold on Starships reusability and using the same vehicle for cargo and human missions. Starship is far more capable than anything else out or even anything on a drawing board, and NASA accepting it for human flights to the Moon signals a lot of confidence in SpaceX and Starship. Hopefully, NASA uses it to its fullest potential. - [0] https://spacenews.com/nasa-selects-three-companies-for-human-landing-system-awards/ https://spacenews.com/nasa-selects-three-companies-for-human...

kiba 6y ago
They are developing a lunar variant so that they can land on the moon.
- MisterBiggs 6y ago
  Yes early Starships for Artemis were planned to be one way and maximize cargo payload to the Moon but that was before SpaceX was accepted for crewed Artemis missions.

themgt 6y ago

This is really huge news. Starship has in about 18 months gone from a Elon standing next to a steel grain silo duct-taped into the shape of a rocket, to all the eggs in NASA's moon basket. The thing I kept thinking - and I have to believe was considered within NASA - is given the rapid progress SpaceX has been making along with the delays in Congressional funding, SLS, BlueOrigin's other projects etc ... if NASA hadn't selected SpaceX there was at least some chance they'd go ahead and do their own private Moon landing mission before NASA's, a massive egg-on-face moment. There are still major risks with the Starship program so I don't think anyone should be 100% confident they can pull this off, but the massive side benefit is if they do NASA will have proven out a generic system, fully reusable and with orbital refueling, that can with minimal modification cost-effectively send humans to Mars and much of the rest of the solar system as well. A Model T or 737 in space. The original Artemis plan never made much sense as a Mars "proof-of-concept", but it actually does now. If at some point say 2025, NASA says to the President "we can get the first human on Mars in 4 years for $15 billion" I have to imagine any American president being eager to sign their name on that accomplishment and give the JFK speech, "We choose to go to Mars in this decade, not because it is easy, but because it is hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win" To me that's the real takeaway here: this is implicitly a huge NASA bet not just on the Moon, but Mars and the rest of the solar system. Finally.

fukmbas 6y ago
Let's be honest. This was a gentleman's agreement that happened on a golf course, nothing else. Tax payers are lining the pockets of musk instead of investing in our own government services.
jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 6y ago
> The original Artemis plan never made much sense as a Mars "proof-of-concept", but it actually does now. IIRC, in the Iliad Artemis helps out Ares (which is kinda the Greek version of Mars). Probably just a coincidence (I'm sure Artemis was chosen because she's Apollo's sister), but fun nonetheless.

cryptoz 6y ago

There's a new render of Starship on Moon (edit), I guess from the presentation happening now. https://twitter.com/nextspaceflight/status/1383150867948261376 https://twitter.com/nextspaceflight/status/13831508679482613...

jccooper 6y ago
Looks like the moon to me.
- cryptoz 6y ago
  Whoops, that's what I meant! Thanks!

bryanlarsen 6y ago

More news from livestream: this contract covers two landings. A test landing and a single crewed landing. A new competition is opening immediately for subsequent landings. SpaceX will have a huge leg up on the competition for the next competition, but if the Senate ponies up with more cash we might get two companies selected for the next contract like was desired for this one.

NotSammyHagar 6y ago
That seems pretty unlikely. "We did it twice, want to buy a few more landings?" vs "give us a cost plus contract, we haven't done it once, also like commerical crew, give us significantly more than the people that already did it". I'd bet on spacex. Who wouldn't?
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  Governments often pay more for multi-sourcing things. It’s just safer from an overall risk mitigation scenario.

WalterBright 6y ago

I wish I could buy stock in SpaceX. I don't even care if it goes bust, I just want to be in on it! (I bought stock in Tesla as a sort of consolation prize because I couldn't buy SpaceX.)

mhh__ 6y ago
Maybe it's an American thing I don't get or just the way I was raised but even though I do believe in SpaceX as a company they are still just that to me i.e. the fact that some people treat them like a sports team is a little jarring to me. Wanting to buy stock is completely understandable, but why do SpaceX fans on Reddit collect lists of evidence that musk is really in charge of engineering for example? I wouldn't stop them from doing it, but at the end of the day this is Mr "pedo guy" they're talking about so the personality cult is odd.
- Strom 6y ago
  It's definitely not an American thing. People idolize other people and groups of people all over the world. The "pedo guy" story is just noise. Elon's fans are much more interested in the positive things he has done and consider Elon to be a significant net positive character.
- kiba 6y ago
  Maybe it's an American thing I don't get or just the way I was raised but even though I do believe in SpaceX as a company they are still just that to me i.e. the fact that some people treat them like a sports team is a little jarring to me. Why would you believe that it's just a business? Rocketry is a really shitty business to get in the first place. Nobody does it unless they're crazy. Wanting to buy stock is completely understandable, but why do SpaceX fans on Reddit collect lists of evidence that musk is really in charge of engineering for example? Because critics said he's not an engineer? Mr "pedo guy" they're talking about so the personality cult is odd. There may be a personalty cult, which is surely unwarranted even for the most saintly of individual, but why the focus on that instead of what SpaceX is doing and their goals?
- lutorm 6y ago

elihu 6y ago

I wonder if they'll use the belly-flop maneuver to land the astronauts back on Earth, or if the astronauts will depart the ship in a more traditional capsule and land separately from the Starship? I guess they have quite a while to figure out the details, and if the belly flop maneuver isn't deemed to be safe enough by the time the mission is ready, it shouldn't be that big a deal to take a more conservative approach.

nickik 6y ago
This is already known. Austronauts launch on SLS/Orion and transfer to moon orbit, transfer to Lunar Gateway or Starship and then land on the moon. Starship launches from surface back to lunar orbit, gives astronauts over to Orion and Orion will then land on earth. Lunar Starship will stay in Lunar orbit and potentially be reusable or just land on the moon to start building a Basecamp.
- elihu 6y ago
  Okay, that makes sense to do a (mostly) one-way Starship trip. Rockets are expensive, but not so much so that it wouldn't be worth it be able to haul more cargo instead of more fuel, and maybe have a nice big stainless steel tube on the moon or in the general vicinity, that could be used for all sorts of things.
aynyc 6y ago
Why can’t they just dock with ISS and use the crew dragon to bring the astronauts home?
- gnzoidberg 6y ago
  Too expensive to brake to LEO, and a bazillion failure modes.

scottrogowski 6y ago

I have a genuine curiousity (because I can't seem to find it in the news reports). The contract is going to the starship design. What exactly are they planning to take that requires such a large ship? The lunar landers were tiny because the Moon has such a small gravity well. For that payload capacity, I assume you would have most or all of a habitable lunar base. Edit: There is this: https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2020/10/28/lunar-living-nasas-artemis-base-camp-concept/ https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2020/10/28/lunar-living-nasas.... I wonder whether NASA will now try to include it on one of the two missions.

skissane 6y ago
> What exactly are they planning to take that requires such a large ship? NASA didn't ask for such a big ship, and would have accepted a smaller one. But if SpaceX bids a big ship, they can't say "no" to it just because it is bigger than they thought they needed. For the first few landings they probably won't even use most of the capacity. But I'm sure NASA will get to work coming up with ideas of things to do with it. One option is to have a much bigger crew. Another option is cargo such as lunar rovers, lunar base modules, ISRU demonstrators, etc. (I wonder if SpaceX will design a slightly different variant optimised for lunar surface cargo delivery.)
- robbiep 6y ago
  They definitely won’t use most of the capacity because they can’t deliver/return even a tiny percentage of it using star liner!
  - skissane 6y ago
    You mean Orion, not Starliner. For inbound cargo, they definitely can use it to its full cargo capacity, since the cargo can be launched with it from Earth. For crew, yes for now the limiting factor is Orion – Orion can only take a crew of four, so that's a maximum number of people you can take onboard, without resorting to multiple flights (infeasible given the cost of the SLS+Orion stack) However, once Starship is crew-rated for launch and re-entry, the number of possible crew is going to increase – I don't know what the limit is, but at least 10, maybe even 20. (Orion is initially also a limiting factor for returning cargo. However, they could use a cargo Starship, provided the returning cargo can be transferred to the cargo Starship in lunar orbit. This may happen before crew-rating Starship for launch and re-entry does.)

hourislate 6y ago

I always thought that if NASA chose another company, by the time they sent astronauts back to the moon they would be greeted by a small group of SpaceX colonists. There really is no competition at this point. Bezos is a joke when it comes to the Space Race in my opinion, he should stick to what he's amazing at like selling groceries and things on Amazon.

edgyquant 6y ago
> Bezos is a joke when it comes to the Space Race in my opinion, he should stick to what he's amazing at like selling groceries and things on Amazon. I seriously disagree. I think Bezos is on a different trajectory than SpaceX and isn’t as concerned with quick iterations. He gets a lot of hate from Elon fanboys but I think he knows exactly what he’s doing and can afford to play the long game.
- kiba 6y ago
  SpaceX is the hare in this story, only it's not stopping to let Boeing catch up. Blue Origin is just a company that's burning money in Bezo's pocket.
  - edgyquant 6y ago
    I believe in ten years this comment will be laughable, but as it stands right now we’ll have to agree to disagree.
    - nickik 6y ago
      Funny I remember people telling me this like 6 years ago how BO would soon dominate. Bezos was actually concerned about quick iteration. They had a smaller rocket planned but because of SpaceX success they wanted to 1-up SpaceX and build an even bigger rocket. So they wet with the New Glenn design that is now public. That of course went away from their 'step by step' approach but Bezos wanted to 1-up Musk. However they announced it and 2 years later realized that they were hopelessly behind schedule so they waited until the last possible second to move it back by 3 years. The problem is of course that SpaceX already has a bigger rocket, Falcon Heavy. SpaceX next generation rocket is making far faster progress then New Glenn and is far more capable. New Glenn will be incredibly expensive and if they don't land it on the first try, they are gone have serious issues because they can't build these rockets very fast. Even if they manage to hit their launch date, their flight rate will be incredibly low for years. At this point, no matter what kind of money Blue has, they can not match SpaceX in team and ability to invest in future technology. Elon started with less 100M and built a 74 billion market cap company out of it that is dominating space industry and is only increasing it dominance over time. They dominate the launch market, the are running away with sat internet, they have every possible NASA service contract, they have been selected as a military launch provider and they are even starting to make inroads into building military sats. At the same time Bezos has thrown 5-10 billion $ into a company that is worth very little and has no clear path to actually making money anytime soon. In fact, its hard to see how they would ever make that money back. If you want to make the argument that in 10 years BO is some juggernaut, I would seriously want an explanation on how they are gone do it.

bane 6y ago

My bet is that in the next couple of years we're going to see SpaceX start to move into in-orbit infrastructure: habitats, refueling depots, servicing stations, orbital assembly yards and so on, all the way up to massive mining systems. Having infrastructure in orbit for say, refueling, reduces potential costs for certain space activities significantly and nobody else really has a good story for lifting the mass needed to build that stuff. Heck, spent Starships might even make decent core components for some of these facilities. Why deorbit them and shipbreak them after their serviceable lifespan when they could be kept up in orbit and comfortably house a dozen humans?

fastball 6y ago
Yeah, I think there are a lot of people that are missing how much of a perfect bottleneck launch capacity is. Lots of companies putting the proverbial cart before the horse, saying "I'm not gonna be the space launch company, I'm gonna be the space hotel company" – but that's not necessarily how things are going to play out in space. In fact, we've already seen this happen with "internet satellite constellation companies". Sure, SpaceX could've just sat back and launched OneWeb's sats for them, but instead they built Starlink and they'll probably eat OneWeb's lunch. With regards to using Starships as infrastructure, I actually saw a pretty cool idea[1], where you attach either two Starships together (or many to some other central structure) via cable/structure and use thrust to spin up around the center of mass, creating artificial gravity through centripetal force. The linked YouTube video talks about going to Mars/etc with this, but no reason it couldn't be a space station in orbit around earth. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CRiJTJikjk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CRiJTJikjk

CynicusRex 6y ago

This rubs me the wrong way, but it's a biased feeling solely because of Elon Musk. I feel like if Musk was ousted from both Tesla and SpaceX these companies would be less tainted. Elon is becoming like Howard Hughes: completely nuts. The nonsense he's spouting and lies he's selling is the complete antithesis to what a virtuous scientist or engineer should strive for, unfortunately he's just a nasty businessman. I can't quite recall where my irritation with him began: the horrendous apocalypse cybertruck, a podcast with Joe Rogan where his laughs seemed totally fake and creepy, his musings with Kanye, defending Amber Heard, calling someone a pedo while having millions of followers, manipulation the market, full self-driving false promises, claiming he founded Tesla, pretending Neuralink's latest demo was novel, Las Vegas' ridiculous redundant tunnel, the list goes on. I don't like the guy any more.

robertlagrant 6y ago
Sounds as though you've gone out of your way to memorise his flaws (the first 3 and last 1 not being flaws, really).
- CynicusRex 6y ago
  I said I was biased. Anyway, I just hoped he was a Tesla, but he's just another Edison. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqyXvMrQDk8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqyXvMrQDk8.
  - robertlagrant 6y ago
    Yeah I was commenting on the things you listed as causing your bias.

skissane 6y ago

Here's the official source selection statement by NASA if anyone wants to read it: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/option-a-source-selection-statement-final.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/option-...

dxxvi 6y ago

I think among all the people commenting here, I'm the only person who doesn't pay for washingtonpost. I'm surprised that the paywal business model works.

ck2 6y ago

Won't happen in my lifetime but how long do you figure until you can look up and realize there are millionaires racing teslas on the moon every weekend (like yacht races)? 30 years? 40? Definitely under 50. Don't get me wrong as I love the science of it all but what do we realistically expect to come out of being able to go to the moon more easily in the near future? I know it's a stepping stone but it has to support itself the first hundred years or two.

CraftingLinks 6y ago

So the US won't land on the moon any time soon then.

TeeMassive 6y ago

I wonder if there are plans to build rockets in orbit. Shipping things in small incremental steps that distributes risk plus the obvious advantages of weightlessness when it comes to heavy infrastructures are maybe the way to go for the future?

paulintrognon 6y ago

Genuine question: why are we going back to the moon? Is it really the best way to use public money? What are the gains?

fastball 6y ago
Space has limitless potential and moon is the obvious place to start if you're serious about reaching for the stars. Some would argue that Mars is a better first step, but either way the idea is the same.
tim333 6y ago
It's not a huge amount of public money here $2.9bn and it helps develop the Starship rocket which has a lot of potential applications.
aeternum 6y ago
Humans will go extinct if we do not leave the earth, if not by an asteroid then it is guaranteed that the sun will eventually expand and burn up the earth. The survival of humanity depends on figuring this out, why put it off?

mvirani 6y ago

Funny how washington post (owned by Bezos) had to share a story about losing a contract to SpaceX.

Isinlor 6y ago

It's worth reminding ourselves that space exploration is not high on humanity priorities list. It's somewhere around lipstick market worth of ~10B dollar per year.