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I wouldn't agree with you if there was no alternative. But since there is an alternative - the Starship - which at least in expendable form, is ready now - cont

I wouldn't agree with you if there was no alternative. But since there is an alternative - the Starship - which at least in expendable form, is ready now - continuing this waste made no sense at all.

yakz 1y ago
> the Starship - which at least in expendable form, is ready now The Starship isn't ready now in expendable form: during the last two tests, it blew up during the initial burn.
- anovikov 1y ago
  Because that was the new version of it, tried for the first two times. Previous ones flew just fine on 3 attempts.
jordanb 1y ago
> the Starship - which at least in expendable form, is ready now After 8 tries starship hasn't successfully gotten its second stage to orbit. The starship-based plan is the most bonkers part of Artemis. They haven't gotten the "easy" parts done (getting to orbit and getting back again) and haven't even started on the "hard" parts (in-flight refueling, a launch cadence to overcome boil-off, actually landing on the moon and taking off again, etc).
- avmich 1y ago
  The Starship in non-reusable stage didn't get to orbit purely to avoid problems with deorbiting, should they happen. Energiya rocket, a Saturn-V class launcher which flew twice in 1980-s, deliberately was not getting to orbital speed, for the same reason - don't need to pollute the orbit in the case deorbiting burn fails. Starship has a disadvantage that it's not that easy to release the payload, so Starship has first to get to full orbit, and then take time to release the payload, and then deorbit, and we can have problems there with what to do with Starship which malfunctioned on the deorbiting stage. However to just get to orbit Starship needs to work a few seconds longer than it did already several times - a rather small change. So it's not quite accurate to accuse them "they didn't get the easy part of getting to orbit done".
  - jordanb 1y ago
    They haven't gotten to orbit because they haven't achieved the preconditions to enter orbit. And yes, rocket science is hard, but getting to orbit and getting their second stage back again is the easy part. The Space Shuttle did it on its first try. The rest of the Artemis plan is stuff nobody has ever done before.
- anovikov 1y ago
  With the rest of Artemis cancelled they won't even need to do any of that. Starship v3 could deliver astronauts to the Moon and back in a single-shot, expendable configuration with direct ascent method, by far the simplest, using Dragon as the only crew capsule (adding a 3rd stage with one Raptor Vacuum, and some sort of a landing and ascent stage).
panick21_ 1y ago
This is a bad way of thinking about it. Starship is not necessary for any of this. Constellation and friends were terrible programs long before SpaceX even existed. Investment in distributed launch and refueling is what should have been the bases of all planning since the 90s.

I wouldn't agree with you if there was no alternative. But since there is an alternative - the Starship - which at least in expendable form, is ready now - continuing this waste made no sense at all.

yakz 1y ago

> the Starship - which at least in expendable form, is ready now The Starship isn't ready now in expendable form: during the last two tests, it blew up during the initial burn.

anovikov 1y ago
Because that was the new version of it, tried for the first two times. Previous ones flew just fine on 3 attempts.

jordanb 1y ago

> the Starship - which at least in expendable form, is ready now After 8 tries starship hasn't successfully gotten its second stage to orbit. The starship-based plan is the most bonkers part of Artemis. They haven't gotten the "easy" parts done (getting to orbit and getting back again) and haven't even started on the "hard" parts (in-flight refueling, a launch cadence to overcome boil-off, actually landing on the moon and taking off again, etc).

avmich 1y ago
The Starship in non-reusable stage didn't get to orbit purely to avoid problems with deorbiting, should they happen. Energiya rocket, a Saturn-V class launcher which flew twice in 1980-s, deliberately was not getting to orbital speed, for the same reason - don't need to pollute the orbit in the case deorbiting burn fails. Starship has a disadvantage that it's not that easy to release the payload, so Starship has first to get to full orbit, and then take time to release the payload, and then deorbit, and we can have problems there with what to do with Starship which malfunctioned on the deorbiting stage. However to just get to orbit Starship needs to work a few seconds longer than it did already several times - a rather small change. So it's not quite accurate to accuse them "they didn't get the easy part of getting to orbit done".
- jordanb 1y ago
  They haven't gotten to orbit because they haven't achieved the preconditions to enter orbit. And yes, rocket science is hard, but getting to orbit and getting their second stage back again is the easy part. The Space Shuttle did it on its first try. The rest of the Artemis plan is stuff nobody has ever done before.
anovikov 1y ago
With the rest of Artemis cancelled they won't even need to do any of that. Starship v3 could deliver astronauts to the Moon and back in a single-shot, expendable configuration with direct ascent method, by far the simplest, using Dragon as the only crew capsule (adding a 3rd stage with one Raptor Vacuum, and some sort of a landing and ascent stage).

panick21_ 1y ago

This is a bad way of thinking about it. Starship is not necessary for any of this. Constellation and friends were terrible programs long before SpaceX even existed. Investment in distributed launch and refueling is what should have been the bases of all planning since the 90s.