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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 bu

• 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.