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Does anyone actually seriously believe the U.S. will land a person on the moon in 2025? This is the country that takes decades to open a new subway station.

akira2501 2y ago
We're the only nation that has ever done it. It seems like unchecked graft is our current main problem. In the scope of all problems of returning people to the Moon this is both expected and the easiest to deal with.
- School-Cotton 2y ago
  > We're the only nation that has ever done it The USA of the 1960s was very different from the one that exists today.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
  What “the US” did 50+ years ago has absolutely no say in what “the US” can do now.
  - whatshisface 2y ago
    Our GDP is about 50x higher now than it was then, in real terms.
    - desperate 2y ago
      Yeah but money can't pay for skill that doesn't exist anymore.
      - darth_avocado 2y ago
        Ohh but it can. The downfall of Boeing has literally been because it prioritized not paying money for skill that definitely exists.
        xtracto 2y ago
        Something else... US current political climate vs immigrants doesn't help. In addition to the life prospects of potential immigrants. I'm a drop on the ocean only, but my case is the one I have: PhD in Computer Science, highly specialized and have lived and worked around the world , but there's not enough that attracts me to living in the US. Its health system issues, the animosity against minorities and immigrants and the lack of reasonable immigration paths for professionals make it unsexy. And as I said I'm literally nobody. How would the US attract real post Ww2 talent?
        School-Cotton 2y ago
        There is definitely animosity towards migrants in the U.S. but I’m not convinced it’s any worse than in any other country with a large immigrant population. Look at the huge advances made recently by far-right parties in Europe for example, or the riots in England. > lack of reasonable immigration paths for professionals getting a visa is the hardest part, but doable if you’re a bit lucky. Once you have the visa, getting permanent residency after a few years and ultimately citizenship is relatively straightforward, IF you’re not from one of a few countries with large numbers of immigrants to the U.S.: mainly Mexico, the Philippines, China and India. It seems from your profile that you’re Mexican so yeah, getting permanent status in the U.S. would take a really long time even if you got a visa. This is one of the biggest competitive disadvantages of the U.S. currently: making it unreasonably hard for skilled people to immigrate, compared to places like Canada or Europe. But I think it’s an exaggeration to say there’s no reasonable path.
        darth_avocado 2y ago
        It can be unreasonable, like you mentioned, if you originate from specific countries. For sectors like Defense, Aerospace etc., you literally can't work unless you are a permanent resident or a citizen. Which means, even if you do have a visa, without a path to permanent immigration, you can't really contribute in those sectors, making it unreasonable.
        2y ago
      - akira2501 2y ago
        I really think it's worth it to go back and read the original Apollo program proposals, technical conference memos, and NASA administrative plans to see the history of the program and how something like this gets off the ground in the first place. The US was not a bastion of technical capability or well educated people in the 1950s. To say that the "skill doesn't exist anymore" suggests a misunderstanding of "where it comes from" in the first place. You can do the same thing for Apollo as you can for the Shuttle. The process of reading through these histories, from front to back, is incredibly enlightening, and shows just how with determination alone you can build something like this from scratch. That being said.. it really also helps if there's a dual purpose use for the military.
        jazzyjackson 2y ago
        Apollo really was a rare alignment of motivations, unbounded optimism meets existential fear, ie, "humanity can migrate into the stars" overlapping with "if we don't do this the commies win first strike capability", seems unlikely to re-occur.
        sgnelson 2y ago
        I think you drastically underestimate the influence that World War 2 had on up-skilling a technological workforce in the United States. I know a handful of people who's fathers or relatives went from farm boy to a radio technician with basic electrical engineering skills (or a similar story) because of the war. The effect that war had on the technological progress, including learning the skills of how to manage a not-so-simple idea like going to the moon into reality was incredible, and a direct spinoff from the bureaucracy created during the war.
        Dalewyn 2y ago
        Most people want to deny it, but both Apollo and Space Shuttle were the results of there being a Fucking War(tm) that had to be won at any cost. Nowadays, that specific motivator is squarely with the Chinese.
        2y ago
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > money can't pay for skill that doesn't exist anymore Expert welders can be trained in years. We could easily buy an Apollo-era generation of aerospace welders if we wanted them.
      - knowaveragejoe 2y ago
        The depth of breadth and skill is still there, even moreso today. Whether Boeing will catalyze that is in question, not the fundamentals.
    - scottyah 2y ago
      GDP in such a services-based economy is unreliable as a metric for the ability to produce, since just moving the money around now contributes to it.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      More like a factor of 6.6. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPC1 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPC1
    - hnthrowaway0315 2y ago
      The spirit is different.
- okanat 2y ago
  When that was happening, the US was spending ungodly amount of money to show Soviets that they can take ~a nuke~ sorry people to the Moon and back. Boeing, Lockheed etc. were still engineering oriented companies full of projects and management opportunities for innovative and risk-taking people. Starting with the Reagan era, they are now emptied out rent seekers full of car salesmen who look up to Jack Welch as a role model.
  - _moof 2y ago
    And there were a lot more players in aerospace then too. Apart from Boeing and Lockheed, Apollo also involved North American Aviation, Grumman, Rocketdyne, General Dynamics, Pratt & Whitney, Douglas, TRW, and Bell. Of those, only General Dynamics and Pratt & Whitney have not been acquired or merged into other companies.
    - knowaveragejoe 2y ago
      Are there not _far_ more players in aerospace today than what you listed? Maybe those of today are not at the scale of the companies you listed at the height of the cold war, but we're really in a new era of space industry.
      - _moof 2y ago
        People making cubesats? Sure. Companies that can build moonshot hardware, though, are far more scarce.
  - knowaveragejoe 2y ago
    > Boeing, Lockheed etc. were still engineering oriented companies full of projects and management opportunities for innovative and risk-taking people. Starting with the Reagan era, they are now emptied out rent seekers full of car salesmen who look up to Jack Welch as a role model. To be fair, Boeing, Lockheed etc won't be the decisive players putting humans back on the moon from the US. It'll be smaller and scrappier players more akin to startups.
davidw 2y ago
There are no NIMBYs on the moon, so maybe?
justinclift 2y ago
If they keep awarding contracts to SpaceX for getting the needed pieces done, then it's possible. :) At least until SpaceX starts to feel a bit too comfortable... o_O
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- dylan604 2y ago
  That doesn't really seem like something SpaceX will do any time soon though. After all, they want Mars. The moon is just wasting time to SpaceX. So until SpaceX achieves Mars, they have too much to do to become too comfortable. Of course, I just sit on a couch offering opinions.
  - nordsieck 2y ago
    > That doesn't really seem like something SpaceX will do any time soon though. After all, they want Mars. The moon is just wasting time to SpaceX. IMO, the opposite is true. 1. SpaceX needs money to fund their Mars dreams. And the HLS contract is a couple billion dollars that they can grab. 2. Getting to the moon with NASA will dramatically help SpaceX because NASA will be working with them to crew rate the lander for everything except taking off from and landing on Earth. 3. Developing HLS Starship will let SpaceX begin to offer private Lunar missions. 4. Mars is really tough. It's far away, it's only feasible to travel there once every 2 years, it's very difficult to land, and it'll be super hard to get in-situ resource utilization - basically harvesting resources from Mars to generate enough propellant that a return trip to Earth is possible. I'm sure SpaceX will probably send some rockets to Mars. But the first few sets will be figuring out hwo to land and maybe set up ISRU. And in the meantime, the Moon is a great venue for SpaceX to train systems and earn a bit of money.
Yeul 2y ago
If America can make space a crusade again instead of a business sure. The Chinese are currently in their Apollo phase in which every engineer dedicates their life to the mission.
pharos92 2y ago
Well we're over 1,000 days in to Kamala Harris' $42B universal broadband access program and not a single subscriber has been connected.
wonderwonder 2y ago
I honestly hope so or soon after although I think it unlikely. The psychological shock to the nation & to the world of seeing China do it before us will be immense. It will have indicated a changing of the guard and the decline of America. But I like to think we will.
kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
That was always a bullshit date. No different than elder Bush's Mars in 2030. 2028, maybe if everything goes well with Starship, and the suits. Their lunar variant is still a disaster waiting to happen without a better design. We've seen how Starship destroys a launch pad with ill-conceived flame diversion. How is it going to land on unprepared regolith without toppling in its own crater or destroying the engines with rebounding shrapnel? SLS is also supposed to somehow fit into the picture which is still not tested in any way resembling the baby steps Apollo took.
- mr_toad 2y ago
  Starship didn’t destroy anything, that was the booster, and they’re not landing a 33 engine booster on the Moon.
- boxed 2y ago
  Super Heavy isn't going to the moon. Also, the moon has less gravity. WAY LESS. I think those two things combined means your logic is off by at least 3 orders of magnitude.
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  "We've seen how Starship destroys a launch pad with ill-conceived flame diversion. How is it going to land on unprepared regolith without toppling in its own crater or destroying the engines with rebounding shrapnel?" Starship has fewer engines than Super Heavy, it likely won't be landing at full throttle either, and lunar lander Starship could have landing legs as well. The lower gravity on the Moon means that you can carry more hardware with you. Maneuvering in 0.16 g is nowhere near as fuel intensive as in 1 g.
- wormlord 2y ago
  Why is this being downvoted? These are all valid concerns.
cco 2y ago
There is a very interesting video from Smarter Every Day that suggests everyone knows that the SLS is physically incapable of landing on the moon as designed but nobody seems to be mentioning it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoJsPvmFixU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoJsPvmFixU
- preisschild 2y ago
  HLS is for landing, but nobody seems to have any plan on how many resources it will take to get Starship HLS there with a full enough tank
  - moffkalast 2y ago
    SpaceX is probably just gonna brute force it by launching 20 times to refuel it, they see it as testing out the hardware anyway.
- the_duke 2y ago
  You got things very confused. SLS is the thing that launches Orion, which is the capsule with humans inside. SLS isn't capable enough to get that capsule into lunar orbit. Orion also isn't landing by itself though, it just transfers the astronauts to a landing vehicle (SpaceX Starship, currently...), which lands and then starts again. The thing brought up in that video is that the rendezvous point should probably be in lunar orbit, but isn't.
  - imtringued 2y ago
    Unfortunately there is no alternative to Orion so far. No, Starship may carry people to the moon, but getting them off the moon isn't possible. The lunar Starship won't return to LEO. The closest thing you could do is send another Starship and do the same NRHO docking that SLS+Orion is already doing and then instead of aerobraking, do a deceleration burn to get an LEO capture. That is the only way without Orion. For better or worse, Orion in NRHO is indispensable.

akira2501 2y ago

We're the only nation that has ever done it. It seems like unchecked graft is our current main problem. In the scope of all problems of returning people to the Moon this is both expected and the easiest to deal with.

School-Cotton 2y ago
> We're the only nation that has ever done it The USA of the 1960s was very different from the one that exists today.
cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
What “the US” did 50+ years ago has absolutely no say in what “the US” can do now.
- whatshisface 2y ago
  Our GDP is about 50x higher now than it was then, in real terms.
  - desperate 2y ago
    Yeah but money can't pay for skill that doesn't exist anymore.
    - darth_avocado 2y ago
      Ohh but it can. The downfall of Boeing has literally been because it prioritized not paying money for skill that definitely exists.
      - xtracto 2y ago
        Something else... US current political climate vs immigrants doesn't help. In addition to the life prospects of potential immigrants. I'm a drop on the ocean only, but my case is the one I have: PhD in Computer Science, highly specialized and have lived and worked around the world , but there's not enough that attracts me to living in the US. Its health system issues, the animosity against minorities and immigrants and the lack of reasonable immigration paths for professionals make it unsexy. And as I said I'm literally nobody. How would the US attract real post Ww2 talent?
        School-Cotton 2y ago
        There is definitely animosity towards migrants in the U.S. but I’m not convinced it’s any worse than in any other country with a large immigrant population. Look at the huge advances made recently by far-right parties in Europe for example, or the riots in England. > lack of reasonable immigration paths for professionals getting a visa is the hardest part, but doable if you’re a bit lucky. Once you have the visa, getting permanent residency after a few years and ultimately citizenship is relatively straightforward, IF you’re not from one of a few countries with large numbers of immigrants to the U.S.: mainly Mexico, the Philippines, China and India. It seems from your profile that you’re Mexican so yeah, getting permanent status in the U.S. would take a really long time even if you got a visa. This is one of the biggest competitive disadvantages of the U.S. currently: making it unreasonably hard for skilled people to immigrate, compared to places like Canada or Europe. But I think it’s an exaggeration to say there’s no reasonable path.
        darth_avocado 2y ago
        It can be unreasonable, like you mentioned, if you originate from specific countries. For sectors like Defense, Aerospace etc., you literally can't work unless you are a permanent resident or a citizen. Which means, even if you do have a visa, without a path to permanent immigration, you can't really contribute in those sectors, making it unreasonable.
        2y ago
    - akira2501 2y ago
      I really think it's worth it to go back and read the original Apollo program proposals, technical conference memos, and NASA administrative plans to see the history of the program and how something like this gets off the ground in the first place. The US was not a bastion of technical capability or well educated people in the 1950s. To say that the "skill doesn't exist anymore" suggests a misunderstanding of "where it comes from" in the first place. You can do the same thing for Apollo as you can for the Shuttle. The process of reading through these histories, from front to back, is incredibly enlightening, and shows just how with determination alone you can build something like this from scratch. That being said.. it really also helps if there's a dual purpose use for the military.
      - jazzyjackson 2y ago
        Apollo really was a rare alignment of motivations, unbounded optimism meets existential fear, ie, "humanity can migrate into the stars" overlapping with "if we don't do this the commies win first strike capability", seems unlikely to re-occur.
      - sgnelson 2y ago
        I think you drastically underestimate the influence that World War 2 had on up-skilling a technological workforce in the United States. I know a handful of people who's fathers or relatives went from farm boy to a radio technician with basic electrical engineering skills (or a similar story) because of the war. The effect that war had on the technological progress, including learning the skills of how to manage a not-so-simple idea like going to the moon into reality was incredible, and a direct spinoff from the bureaucracy created during the war.
        Dalewyn 2y ago
        Most people want to deny it, but both Apollo and Space Shuttle were the results of there being a Fucking War(tm) that had to be won at any cost. Nowadays, that specific motivator is squarely with the Chinese.
        2y ago
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > money can't pay for skill that doesn't exist anymore Expert welders can be trained in years. We could easily buy an Apollo-era generation of aerospace welders if we wanted them.
    - knowaveragejoe 2y ago
      The depth of breadth and skill is still there, even moreso today. Whether Boeing will catalyze that is in question, not the fundamentals.
  - scottyah 2y ago
    GDP in such a services-based economy is unreliable as a metric for the ability to produce, since just moving the money around now contributes to it.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    More like a factor of 6.6. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPC1 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPC1
  - hnthrowaway0315 2y ago
    The spirit is different.
okanat 2y ago
When that was happening, the US was spending ungodly amount of money to show Soviets that they can take ~a nuke~ sorry people to the Moon and back. Boeing, Lockheed etc. were still engineering oriented companies full of projects and management opportunities for innovative and risk-taking people. Starting with the Reagan era, they are now emptied out rent seekers full of car salesmen who look up to Jack Welch as a role model.
- _moof 2y ago
  And there were a lot more players in aerospace then too. Apart from Boeing and Lockheed, Apollo also involved North American Aviation, Grumman, Rocketdyne, General Dynamics, Pratt & Whitney, Douglas, TRW, and Bell. Of those, only General Dynamics and Pratt & Whitney have not been acquired or merged into other companies.
  - knowaveragejoe 2y ago
    Are there not _far_ more players in aerospace today than what you listed? Maybe those of today are not at the scale of the companies you listed at the height of the cold war, but we're really in a new era of space industry.
    - _moof 2y ago
      People making cubesats? Sure. Companies that can build moonshot hardware, though, are far more scarce.
- knowaveragejoe 2y ago
  > Boeing, Lockheed etc. were still engineering oriented companies full of projects and management opportunities for innovative and risk-taking people. Starting with the Reagan era, they are now emptied out rent seekers full of car salesmen who look up to Jack Welch as a role model. To be fair, Boeing, Lockheed etc won't be the decisive players putting humans back on the moon from the US. It'll be smaller and scrappier players more akin to startups.

davidw 2y ago

There are no NIMBYs on the moon, so maybe?

justinclift 2y ago

If they keep awarding contracts to SpaceX for getting the needed pieces done, then it's possible. :) At least until SpaceX starts to feel a bit too comfortable... o_O

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
dylan604 2y ago
That doesn't really seem like something SpaceX will do any time soon though. After all, they want Mars. The moon is just wasting time to SpaceX. So until SpaceX achieves Mars, they have too much to do to become too comfortable. Of course, I just sit on a couch offering opinions.
- nordsieck 2y ago
  > That doesn't really seem like something SpaceX will do any time soon though. After all, they want Mars. The moon is just wasting time to SpaceX. IMO, the opposite is true. 1. SpaceX needs money to fund their Mars dreams. And the HLS contract is a couple billion dollars that they can grab. 2. Getting to the moon with NASA will dramatically help SpaceX because NASA will be working with them to crew rate the lander for everything except taking off from and landing on Earth. 3. Developing HLS Starship will let SpaceX begin to offer private Lunar missions. 4. Mars is really tough. It's far away, it's only feasible to travel there once every 2 years, it's very difficult to land, and it'll be super hard to get in-situ resource utilization - basically harvesting resources from Mars to generate enough propellant that a return trip to Earth is possible. I'm sure SpaceX will probably send some rockets to Mars. But the first few sets will be figuring out hwo to land and maybe set up ISRU. And in the meantime, the Moon is a great venue for SpaceX to train systems and earn a bit of money.

Yeul 2y ago

If America can make space a crusade again instead of a business sure. The Chinese are currently in their Apollo phase in which every engineer dedicates their life to the mission.

pharos92 2y ago

Well we're over 1,000 days in to Kamala Harris' $42B universal broadband access program and not a single subscriber has been connected.

wonderwonder 2y ago

I honestly hope so or soon after although I think it unlikely. The psychological shock to the nation & to the world of seeing China do it before us will be immense. It will have indicated a changing of the guard and the decline of America. But I like to think we will.

kevin_thibedeau 2y ago

That was always a bullshit date. No different than elder Bush's Mars in 2030. 2028, maybe if everything goes well with Starship, and the suits. Their lunar variant is still a disaster waiting to happen without a better design. We've seen how Starship destroys a launch pad with ill-conceived flame diversion. How is it going to land on unprepared regolith without toppling in its own crater or destroying the engines with rebounding shrapnel? SLS is also supposed to somehow fit into the picture which is still not tested in any way resembling the baby steps Apollo took.

mr_toad 2y ago
Starship didn’t destroy anything, that was the booster, and they’re not landing a 33 engine booster on the Moon.
boxed 2y ago
Super Heavy isn't going to the moon. Also, the moon has less gravity. WAY LESS. I think those two things combined means your logic is off by at least 3 orders of magnitude.
inglor_cz 2y ago
"We've seen how Starship destroys a launch pad with ill-conceived flame diversion. How is it going to land on unprepared regolith without toppling in its own crater or destroying the engines with rebounding shrapnel?" Starship has fewer engines than Super Heavy, it likely won't be landing at full throttle either, and lunar lander Starship could have landing legs as well. The lower gravity on the Moon means that you can carry more hardware with you. Maneuvering in 0.16 g is nowhere near as fuel intensive as in 1 g.
wormlord 2y ago
Why is this being downvoted? These are all valid concerns.

cco 2y ago

There is a very interesting video from Smarter Every Day that suggests everyone knows that the SLS is physically incapable of landing on the moon as designed but nobody seems to be mentioning it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoJsPvmFixU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoJsPvmFixU

preisschild 2y ago
HLS is for landing, but nobody seems to have any plan on how many resources it will take to get Starship HLS there with a full enough tank
- moffkalast 2y ago
  SpaceX is probably just gonna brute force it by launching 20 times to refuel it, they see it as testing out the hardware anyway.
the_duke 2y ago
You got things very confused. SLS is the thing that launches Orion, which is the capsule with humans inside. SLS isn't capable enough to get that capsule into lunar orbit. Orion also isn't landing by itself though, it just transfers the astronauts to a landing vehicle (SpaceX Starship, currently...), which lands and then starts again. The thing brought up in that video is that the rendezvous point should probably be in lunar orbit, but isn't.
- imtringued 2y ago
  Unfortunately there is no alternative to Orion so far. No, Starship may carry people to the moon, but getting them off the moon isn't possible. The lunar Starship won't return to LEO. The closest thing you could do is send another Starship and do the same NRHO docking that SLS+Orion is already doing and then instead of aerobraking, do a deceleration burn to get an LEO capture. That is the only way without Orion. For better or worse, Orion in NRHO is indispensable.