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> This is very unlike the contracts that Lockheed Martin and Boeing work under for the Orion capsule and the SLS contract. Just in comparison, those system alre

by mabbo 5y ago

> This is very unlike the contracts that Lockheed Martin and Boeing work under for the Orion capsule and the SLS contract. Just in comparison, those system already at up almost 20 billion each, they have sometimes over 2 billion a year in funding. The extra cost for failing to deliver these systems is paid by NASA. The growing elephant in the room is SpaceX's Starship. What happens if Boeing says "Yeah, sorry, we need to delay the moon landings 3 more years- at $2B/year out of your pockets" and SpaceX steps up and says "Cancel the SLS/Orion program, give us $2B one time and we'll put your astronauts on the surface on schedule with Starship". All that would need to happen to reach that is SpaceX succeeding and Boeing falling behind. A formerly-unlikely scenario that now is the norm.

iso1210 5y ago
I think most people accept it's likely. I suspect Starship will land (unmanned) on the moon before Starliner enters regular service, let alone SLS
tjpnz 5y ago
>we'll put your astronauts on the surface on schedule with Starship That's already going to happen assuming things go to plan (and Bezos doesn't play any further shenanigans). They could offer seats to lunar orbit and back either with Starship or Falcon Heavy in expendable mode.
panick21_ 5y ago
SLS/Orion is already not needed. You could use Falcon 9/Dragon to get astronauts into Orbit and back. Then use Starship to do the moon and back part. If you actually did a clean sheet architecture, there is literally zero reason to do SLS/Orion. Starship is one on the critical path anyway. The only difference is you go from the capsule to Starship in LEO instead.
- Denvercoder9 5y ago
  > Then use Starship to do the moon and back part. The problem is that the current design for the lunar Starship doesn't have enough propellant left over to leave lunar orbit, let alone enter Earth orbit (and it has been stripped of its heatshield, so no aerocapture). Going back on a Starship requires first delivering fuel for that Starship to lunar orbit, which adds another ~8 launches to each mission.
  - panick21_ 5y ago
    More launches are fine, that is far cheaper then SLS/Orion.
    - Denvercoder9 5y ago
      It's not just about money though, it's also about operational complexity. We don't have experience launching that many ships in that short of a timeframe (propellant boil-off is a real issue), and any one failed launch breaks the whole plan.
      - cryptonector 5y ago
        Meh. Give it a couple of years and it will be routine.
      - cnlevy 5y ago
        90% will be tanker launches, and will be reused. If one fails, you just launch the next one coming out from the Starship assembly line instead of reusing.
      - socialdemocrat 5y ago
        But this can be done before any humans are launched into LEO, so they have the luxury of screwing this up without putting any humans at risk. If it doesn't work, cancel the mission without ever launching humans into LEO, get back to the drawing board and fix the refueling issue.
      - socialdemocrat 5y ago
        They don't need to use the huge starship though. In principle they could build a dedicated space craft which is fitted on top of Falcon Heavy and delivered to LEO. Being smaller than Starship you should not need refueling. Astronauts arrive to LEO using F9 and dragon, where they dock and transfer to this dedicate space craft which takes them to the moon. They could even send the same kind of vehicle ahead of schedule to the moon as a backup for when the astronauts are going home.
      - 5y ago
- socialdemocrat 5y ago
  Yeah lots of ways of doing this. You could fit a LEO-to-moon transport vehicle, as described by Robert Zubrin, on a Falcon Heavy. Basically you use Falcon9 to get in and out of LEO using Dragon. A Falcon Heavy can push a larger space craft into LEO and it saves weight by the fact that a LEO-to-moon vehicle doesn't need heath shield and other stuff which makes a Dragon capsule heavier. And with Falcons being cheap you could even send a whole bunch of LEO-to-moon vehicles straight to the moon surface, as well as just dump fuel tanks there. SpaceX has a lot of these and can build them quite cheaply, so the mission will have a lot more built in safety. E.g. if you got an extra lunar ascent vehicle sitting on the landing site already before astronauts arrive, you have extra redundancy.
m_mueller 5y ago
I'm big on following Starship development, but I think people are a bit overly optimistic about what can be achieved with it in the next couple of years (while having a blind eye on what it will be able to do within a 20y timeframe). From current development and past experience at human rating their Dragon I think that it will take 7-10 years[1] for Starship to reach that level. But once it does reach it, it will make pretty much everything else obsolete and it will start a new spaceflight era, where ISRU and space mining suddenly become a thing within just a few years. [1] take Falcon 9 as a reference - it first launched in 2010 and their first manned mission was only last year in 2020. yes, SpaceX has grown significantly since then, but so have their ambitions with Starship. Fuel transfer and 2nd stage reentry/landing are significant further milestones to reach besides just getting it to orbit. And then they'll have to prove safety margins, life support systems, abort scenarios...
- SEJeff 5y ago
  But Falcon 9 also took a long time because it doesn't launch all that often and SpaceX had a lot to learn about how to work with NASA. The "idea" of Starship / Superheavy is that the same first and second stage can get caught by the landing tower "chopsticks", have a crane re-mate them, fuel them, and relaunch them within 24 hours or less. If they can relaunch the same entire stack more than say 2 times per day, they're going to absolutely hit the reliability margins[1] that NASA / the FAA want to see in a very short time period. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-rating_certification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-rating_certification The NASA CCP human-rating standards require that the probability of a loss on ascent does not exceed 1 in 500, and that the probability of a loss on descent did not exceed 1 in 500. The overall mission loss risk, which includes vehicle risk from micrometeorites and orbital debris while in orbit for up to 210 days, is required to be no more than 1 in 270.[3] Maximum sustained acceleration is limited to 3 g.
  - voakbasda 5y ago
    I would very much like to see the data and math used to calculate these odds.
cryptonector 5y ago
Or if SpaceX says "y'all keep waiting for SLS and Orion, we're going to the moon on our own at no cost to you".
- jpgvm 5y ago
  As extreme as it sounds it really isn't that unlikely. Musk may fund it out of his own pile of fuck you money just as a marketing stunt. The first Falcon Heavy launch was pretty much the same thing. Pretty sure he could ask a bunch of folks if there is any cool payloads they want to put on the moon and just yeet it up there with a Tesla Roadster, first car on the moon. Never underestimate the size of his ego or his sheer force of will.
oxplot 5y ago
> Cancel the SLS/Orion program I sure hope they do and give that money to either SpaceX or pretty much any other promising startup around (can't think of any with the payload requirements needed for a moon/mars mission).

by mabbo 5y ago

iso1210 5y ago

I think most people accept it's likely. I suspect Starship will land (unmanned) on the moon before Starliner enters regular service, let alone SLS

tjpnz 5y ago

>we'll put your astronauts on the surface on schedule with Starship That's already going to happen assuming things go to plan (and Bezos doesn't play any further shenanigans). They could offer seats to lunar orbit and back either with Starship or Falcon Heavy in expendable mode.

panick21_ 5y ago

SLS/Orion is already not needed. You could use Falcon 9/Dragon to get astronauts into Orbit and back. Then use Starship to do the moon and back part. If you actually did a clean sheet architecture, there is literally zero reason to do SLS/Orion. Starship is one on the critical path anyway. The only difference is you go from the capsule to Starship in LEO instead.

Denvercoder9 5y ago
> Then use Starship to do the moon and back part. The problem is that the current design for the lunar Starship doesn't have enough propellant left over to leave lunar orbit, let alone enter Earth orbit (and it has been stripped of its heatshield, so no aerocapture). Going back on a Starship requires first delivering fuel for that Starship to lunar orbit, which adds another ~8 launches to each mission.
- panick21_ 5y ago
  More launches are fine, that is far cheaper then SLS/Orion.
  - Denvercoder9 5y ago
    It's not just about money though, it's also about operational complexity. We don't have experience launching that many ships in that short of a timeframe (propellant boil-off is a real issue), and any one failed launch breaks the whole plan.
    - cryptonector 5y ago
      Meh. Give it a couple of years and it will be routine.
    - cnlevy 5y ago
      90% will be tanker launches, and will be reused. If one fails, you just launch the next one coming out from the Starship assembly line instead of reusing.
    - socialdemocrat 5y ago
      But this can be done before any humans are launched into LEO, so they have the luxury of screwing this up without putting any humans at risk. If it doesn't work, cancel the mission without ever launching humans into LEO, get back to the drawing board and fix the refueling issue.
    - socialdemocrat 5y ago
      They don't need to use the huge starship though. In principle they could build a dedicated space craft which is fitted on top of Falcon Heavy and delivered to LEO. Being smaller than Starship you should not need refueling. Astronauts arrive to LEO using F9 and dragon, where they dock and transfer to this dedicate space craft which takes them to the moon. They could even send the same kind of vehicle ahead of schedule to the moon as a backup for when the astronauts are going home.
    - 5y ago
socialdemocrat 5y ago
Yeah lots of ways of doing this. You could fit a LEO-to-moon transport vehicle, as described by Robert Zubrin, on a Falcon Heavy. Basically you use Falcon9 to get in and out of LEO using Dragon. A Falcon Heavy can push a larger space craft into LEO and it saves weight by the fact that a LEO-to-moon vehicle doesn't need heath shield and other stuff which makes a Dragon capsule heavier. And with Falcons being cheap you could even send a whole bunch of LEO-to-moon vehicles straight to the moon surface, as well as just dump fuel tanks there. SpaceX has a lot of these and can build them quite cheaply, so the mission will have a lot more built in safety. E.g. if you got an extra lunar ascent vehicle sitting on the landing site already before astronauts arrive, you have extra redundancy.

m_mueller 5y ago

I'm big on following Starship development, but I think people are a bit overly optimistic about what can be achieved with it in the next couple of years (while having a blind eye on what it will be able to do within a 20y timeframe). From current development and past experience at human rating their Dragon I think that it will take 7-10 years[1] for Starship to reach that level. But once it does reach it, it will make pretty much everything else obsolete and it will start a new spaceflight era, where ISRU and space mining suddenly become a thing within just a few years. [1] take Falcon 9 as a reference - it first launched in 2010 and their first manned mission was only last year in 2020. yes, SpaceX has grown significantly since then, but so have their ambitions with Starship. Fuel transfer and 2nd stage reentry/landing are significant further milestones to reach besides just getting it to orbit. And then they'll have to prove safety margins, life support systems, abort scenarios...

SEJeff 5y ago
But Falcon 9 also took a long time because it doesn't launch all that often and SpaceX had a lot to learn about how to work with NASA. The "idea" of Starship / Superheavy is that the same first and second stage can get caught by the landing tower "chopsticks", have a crane re-mate them, fuel them, and relaunch them within 24 hours or less. If they can relaunch the same entire stack more than say 2 times per day, they're going to absolutely hit the reliability margins[1] that NASA / the FAA want to see in a very short time period. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-rating_certification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-rating_certification The NASA CCP human-rating standards require that the probability of a loss on ascent does not exceed 1 in 500, and that the probability of a loss on descent did not exceed 1 in 500. The overall mission loss risk, which includes vehicle risk from micrometeorites and orbital debris while in orbit for up to 210 days, is required to be no more than 1 in 270.[3] Maximum sustained acceleration is limited to 3 g.
- voakbasda 5y ago
  I would very much like to see the data and math used to calculate these odds.

cryptonector 5y ago

Or if SpaceX says "y'all keep waiting for SLS and Orion, we're going to the moon on our own at no cost to you".

jpgvm 5y ago
As extreme as it sounds it really isn't that unlikely. Musk may fund it out of his own pile of fuck you money just as a marketing stunt. The first Falcon Heavy launch was pretty much the same thing. Pretty sure he could ask a bunch of folks if there is any cool payloads they want to put on the moon and just yeet it up there with a Tesla Roadster, first car on the moon. Never underestimate the size of his ego or his sheer force of will.

oxplot 5y ago

> Cancel the SLS/Orion program I sure hope they do and give that money to either SpaceX or pretty much any other promising startup around (can't think of any with the payload requirements needed for a moon/mars mission).