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It always seemed bonkers to me that Starship was selected as the moon lander when the first lunar mission will require five fuel transfers in orbit, a technolog

It always seemed bonkers to me that Starship was selected as the moon lander when the first lunar mission will require five fuel transfers in orbit, a technology that has never been demonstrated, along with the ability to land a tall rocket vertically on lunar terrain. What was so terrible about the 1960's mission architecture? The chief goal of the Artemis program is to solve difficult bureaucratic problems at NASA. As an engineering or exploration program it makes no sense on the merits, and the sooner it dies the better.

Robotbeat 3y ago
The 1960s architecture was not sustainable. Artemis is supposed to be sustainable, was supposed to have reusable landers, which implies refueling. So refueling as a technology was already something NASA desired. Starship is also about 50 times more capable than the Apollo LM. Artemis is also supposed to be preparing for Mars, which Apollo didn’t do. Artemis is also less well funded than Apollo. I’m not sure why Starship HLS gets the hate it does. It’s by far the best choice NASA could’ve made, and it’s cheap enough that NASA can select a second lander provider, allowing redundancy.
- idlewords 3y ago
  "Sustainability" is a bureaucratic requirement, not a technical requirement. The reason the mission architecture has been stuffed full of reusable components like Orion, Starship and the Gateway is to make one-off capital expenses into long-term operational expenses that are difficult to cut. This is the same reason important parts of the whole program are being farmed out to ESA. Starship gets hated on because it's vaporware being promoted by someone with a long track record of creative promise making across multiple fields of endeavor.
  - Robotbeat 3y ago
    “Idlewords” indeed. No one with actual deep knowledge of the space industry thinks Starship is vaporware. SpaceX has been launching more stuff to orbit on Falcon than the rest of the planet combined, and virtually all on a mostly-reusable orbital rocket, the only one that is in operation today. They also have been the sole domestic provider for orbital crew launch in the US since Shuttle retired. This is not “empty promises.” Compare that to New Glenn, for instance, which is years behind schedule. The first orbital rocket from a company that was started before SpaceX.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
> What was so terrible about the 1960's mission architecture? They knew in the 60's that the Apollo architecture was sub-optimal. The reason they chose the one giant stack architecture of Apollo was because it had a better chance of making Kennedy's 1969 deadline than a refueling deadline than a multi-launch structure which would have been both cheaper and more useful for non-lunar missions.
- cubefox 3y ago
  Yet the Blue Origin lander, the (now cancelled) Leiden/Dynetics lander, and the original NASA lander "Altair" (for the cancelled Constellation program) would all use the the same basic concept of the Apollo Lunar Module. So approximately nobody thought the Apollo approach was suboptimal. The reason SpaceX was chosen for Artemis 3 probably had only to do with their very low price. NASA has no problem spending ungodly amounts of money on their own projects (Orion, SLS, their now cancelled spacesuits) but when they switch to private companies they try to save as much money as possible. It is likely that NASA could have funded all three Artemis launchers while still staying below what they would have spent on Altair.
throwawaymobule 3y ago
didn't Apollo also need fuel transfer in space? or am I misremembering?
- _moof 3y ago
  No; maybe you're thinking of how the LM had to be extracted from the fairing and docked to the CM in space?
93po 3y ago
> require five fuel transfers in orbit, a technology that has never been demonstrated SpaceX does transfers a lot more complicated than fuel (including human beings) all the time and it's fine. > land a tall rocket vertically on lunar terrain is the real hurdle here, along with differences in gravity. Though lack of said gravity does make the landing part a lot easier.
panick21_ 3y ago
> What was so terrible about the 1960's mission architecture? That it could get 2 people to the moon for a few days. While Starhip can get 5-10 people to the moon for a few months including lots research capabilities, showers, ground artifacts and much more. You are basically comparing a scooter to a truck. How does that make sense? There is a reason that non of the contractors went with that kind of architecture when the original contract was bid.

Robotbeat 3y ago

The 1960s architecture was not sustainable. Artemis is supposed to be sustainable, was supposed to have reusable landers, which implies refueling. So refueling as a technology was already something NASA desired. Starship is also about 50 times more capable than the Apollo LM. Artemis is also supposed to be preparing for Mars, which Apollo didn’t do. Artemis is also less well funded than Apollo. I’m not sure why Starship HLS gets the hate it does. It’s by far the best choice NASA could’ve made, and it’s cheap enough that NASA can select a second lander provider, allowing redundancy.

idlewords 3y ago
"Sustainability" is a bureaucratic requirement, not a technical requirement. The reason the mission architecture has been stuffed full of reusable components like Orion, Starship and the Gateway is to make one-off capital expenses into long-term operational expenses that are difficult to cut. This is the same reason important parts of the whole program are being farmed out to ESA. Starship gets hated on because it's vaporware being promoted by someone with a long track record of creative promise making across multiple fields of endeavor.
- Robotbeat 3y ago
  “Idlewords” indeed. No one with actual deep knowledge of the space industry thinks Starship is vaporware. SpaceX has been launching more stuff to orbit on Falcon than the rest of the planet combined, and virtually all on a mostly-reusable orbital rocket, the only one that is in operation today. They also have been the sole domestic provider for orbital crew launch in the US since Shuttle retired. This is not “empty promises.” Compare that to New Glenn, for instance, which is years behind schedule. The first orbital rocket from a company that was started before SpaceX.

bryanlarsen 3y ago

> What was so terrible about the 1960's mission architecture? They knew in the 60's that the Apollo architecture was sub-optimal. The reason they chose the one giant stack architecture of Apollo was because it had a better chance of making Kennedy's 1969 deadline than a refueling deadline than a multi-launch structure which would have been both cheaper and more useful for non-lunar missions.

cubefox 3y ago
Yet the Blue Origin lander, the (now cancelled) Leiden/Dynetics lander, and the original NASA lander "Altair" (for the cancelled Constellation program) would all use the the same basic concept of the Apollo Lunar Module. So approximately nobody thought the Apollo approach was suboptimal. The reason SpaceX was chosen for Artemis 3 probably had only to do with their very low price. NASA has no problem spending ungodly amounts of money on their own projects (Orion, SLS, their now cancelled spacesuits) but when they switch to private companies they try to save as much money as possible. It is likely that NASA could have funded all three Artemis launchers while still staying below what they would have spent on Altair.

throwawaymobule 3y ago

didn't Apollo also need fuel transfer in space? or am I misremembering?

_moof 3y ago
No; maybe you're thinking of how the LM had to be extracted from the fairing and docked to the CM in space?

93po 3y ago

> require five fuel transfers in orbit, a technology that has never been demonstrated SpaceX does transfers a lot more complicated than fuel (including human beings) all the time and it's fine. > land a tall rocket vertically on lunar terrain is the real hurdle here, along with differences in gravity. Though lack of said gravity does make the landing part a lot easier.

panick21_ 3y ago

> What was so terrible about the 1960's mission architecture? That it could get 2 people to the moon for a few days. While Starhip can get 5-10 people to the moon for a few months including lots research capabilities, showers, ground artifacts and much more. You are basically comparing a scooter to a truck. How does that make sense? There is a reason that non of the contractors went with that kind of architecture when the original contract was bid.