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Starship will be the rocket delivering them to the surface. It is likely to have a first orbital test within the next 3 months. That will be a major milestone,
by gibolt 4y ago
Starship will be the rocket delivering them to the surface. It is likely to have a first orbital test within the next 3 months. That will be a major milestone, approaching the capability to once again land and return humans from the lunar surface.
- 96llort 4y ago[dead]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- chrisco255 4y agoWhat I don't understand is why is the SLS being used to transport the humans to lunar orbit but the Starship HLS is supposed to take them to the surface? Why not just ride the Starship the whole way?
- grecy 4y agoBecause then there would be no reason for SLS, and all the jobs it creates. At this point it's widely accepted the SLS design is already obsolete with no reuse, is wildly expensive, and is extremely delayed. But it creates a lot of jobs in areas where congressmen want to get reelected, so they keep it going. Sooner or later it will die and Starship will take over, but it's going milk many more billions before then.
- whatshisface 4y agoSLS is not obsolete until Starship flies. That's probably coming soon, but it hasn't happened yet. If the delays hadn't happened it would have been around a few years before Starship and gotten some good use.
- grecy 4y ago> If the delays hadn't happened it would have been around a few years before Starship and gotten some good use It costs $2.2 BILLION per launch, and it only launches ~once per year. That doesn't sound like "some good use" to me.
- yamtaddle 4y agoWhen I visited the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL a couple years back, it was full of stuff promoting the SLS as the future of space flight, without any mention of other, non-NASA platforms. It felt like the kind of propaganda-driven alternative reality one might encounter in the Soviet Union—it's been plain for years that, at best, it's gonna be obsolete by the time it's ready, but here are all these pieces of marketing pretending it's not a giant waste of money and carefully avoiding mentioning any more-promising rockets. If a person came in without any idea what was going on in modern space flight, they'd have left the place having gotten entirely the wrong impression. It was the opposite of educational. Then again, most of it that wasn't run-down and/or broken just felt like a big, ugly, defense contractor trade show (complete with the kind of hilariously-terrible graphical collages & infographics that end up in military powerpoint slides), so that's in keeping with the rest of the vibe. Gross, definitely do not recommend. If you can convince them to let you into just the Saturn V hangar at half-off the normal ticket price, that'd be worth it.
- szoszon 4y agoI'm not sure if there really is any difference between milking the taxpayers by SpaceX or Boeing/ULA/NG/AR.
- KerrAvon 4y agoDespite the unfortunate presence of Apartheid Clyde, SpaceX has established a track record of actually building sustainable, reusable, reliable rockets at a reasonable cost and the traditional NASA contractor base represented by the other group has not.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kevin_thibedeau 4y agoThe lander won't be a regular starship. It doesn't have a thermal protection system or the wings since they're just non-functional dead weight. They'll need another vehicle to get home.
- chrisco255 4y agoYeah I get that the lunar lander is a different thing, but presumably you could pack a return module into the Starship payload as well? Or dock with a Dragon in LEO?