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April 6: flyby April 10: splashdown After that, the exciting work will be in Starship making LEO and testing propellant transfer (a humanity first) [1] and Bl

April 6: flyby April 10: splashdown After that, the exciting work will be in Starship making LEO and testing propellant transfer (a humanity first) [1] and Blue Origin testing its rocket and lunar lander [2], both scheduled for 2026, to enable Artemis II (EDIT: III), currently scheduled—optimistically, in my opinion—for next year. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starship_launches#Future_launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starship_launches#Futu... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Moon_Pathfinder_Mission_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Moon_Pathfinder_Mission_1

aethelraed 8mo ago
[dead]
mulmen 8mo ago
This mission is Artemis II. Is Artemis III the one with a lander?
- JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
  > Is Artemis III the one with a lander? Not anymore. Artemis III is now a LEO systems check [1]. Comparable to Apollo 9. (Side note: when did we switch from Arabic to Roman numerals?) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_III https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_III
  - fluidcruft 8mo ago
    I don't know but the rockets and missiles have done that (Saturn V, Minuteman III, etc)
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - xattt 8mo ago
    There’s definitely “notation-fluidity” in Apollo mission patches. 10 is Roman, 11 is Arabic, 12 & 13 are Roman again.
    - FabHK 8mo ago
      Which is weird, because "X", "10", "XI", "XII", "12", "XIII", "13" are all unambiguous, while "11" could be read as "II" = 2 depending on the font. In other words, they switched exactly as to maximise ambiguity.
lexluthor38 8mo ago
I think you meant Artemis III in your comment. Good info though, didn't realize they were relying on those two other projects for the next one.
SyzygyRhythm 8mo ago
Starship "making LEO" is not a significant challenge--the existing flights have explicitly targeted a (very slightly) suborbital trajectory. They could have done otherwise at any point, but for now it's more important to guarantee that the stage comes down immediately. None of their current objectives require more than ~1/2 of an orbit. Starship v3 flying will be a significant leap, though. It's the first with the Raptor v3 engines and has many other improvements as well, such as updated grid fins and hot staging ring. It will be the first that achieves close to the intended capacity of ~100 tons. Propellant transfer is indeed a significant challenge. They have already demonstrated internal transfers between tanks, but not between spacecraft. Very exciting times ahead!
- JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
  > Starship "making LEO" is not a significant challenge Of course it is. I say this as someone who sturdied astronautics. You’re broadly correct, though. My point is the action shifts to Hawthorne and West Texas for the next year or so. Then pivots back to NASA for Artemis IV.
  - sillysaurusx 8mo ago
    Odd. As a side note, your comment was posted [dead]. I vouched it to restore it back to life. This is the second time I’ve seen such insta-dead comments. (One was my own, and I thought I did something wrong. Now it looks like there’s some kind of bug in HN that’s killing on-topic comments when they’re posted.) Your comment wasn’t deep or insightful, but not every comment should be. A simple rejection of a premise is certainly on-topic. So it’s hard to argue that your comment was “bad”. That narrows the possibilities down to a bug in the algorithm. Maybe the mods are experimenting with ML auto classifying whether new comments should be killed or not.
    - JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
      Aww. Thanks. Wonder what I did to piss of YC.
ActorNightly 8mo ago
Starship is just obscene. The thing is never going to work for its designed purpose once you understand what the mission looks like (basically insane amount of refuel dockings while the thing is in orbit)
- eru 8mo ago
  What makes you think so?
- JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
  > insane amount of refuel dockings while the thing is in orbit What's wrong with this? Lots of launches is fine until we build the scale required to make a proper depot worthwhile. (Which, by the way, is part of Artemis's plans. Though currently it looks like a bunch of glued-together Starship tankers.)
  - XorNot 8mo ago
    Also all those missions can be unmanned. If you want to get good at something then you do it a lot. The only question is whether the cost of flying all those missions would be prohibitive: by the stated goals, starship should be able to do the refueling missions cheaper then an SLS launch. Obviously if it can't then it's failed, but the point of it is cheap heavy lift to LEO which is very obviously quite valuable. Building a big specialty rocket to get to the moon is waste.
  - ActorNightly 8mo ago
    People act like with Falcon, they basically just get it off the drone ship, fill er up, and she is good to go again. There is a shitload of repairs/maintenance that has to be done to Falcon vehicles after every launch. In space, you can't do that kind of repair/maintenance, you have to make sure the refueling is PERFECT. And this is with deep cryogenic propellants that very much like to boil off and cause pressure increases in the tanks they are contained. That problem hasn't even been touched yet. In order to make Spaceship X happen, they need to figure one refueling out, which is difficult given the fact that Raptors run on cryogenic propellant that likes to boil off, then they need to figure out how to do 10 in a row without any issues, which is exponentially difficult. And then there is the whole thing about everything working well for trip to Mars, and back. And if there is a configuration that exists that can do all of that, its very unlikely that a company under the leadership of someone as Musk can ever figure this out. For interplanetary travel, things need to start from either orbit or the moon. This has been known for quite some time.
jojobas 8mo ago
HLS isn't going anywhere.
- JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
  > HLS isn't going anywhere I've been hearing this about every SpaceX project for the last twenty years.
  - jojobas 8mo ago
    Judging by the fact it's 2026 you must be writing this from the Mars base.
    - JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
      > Judging by the fact it's 2026 you must be writing this from the Mars base SpaceX was started in 2001. It announced Falcon 9 and messaged its reusability ambitions in 2005. Falcon 1 wasn’t going anywhere because making rockets is too hard. Falcons 5 and 9 weren’t going anywhere because medium lift is a different ball game. Falcon Heavy wasn’t going anywhere because timing that many engines impossible. Reuse is impossible. (The kerosene will clog everything.) Then, after refly: the total launch market will never be more than $5bn, so reuse is useless. More recently stainless steel can’t work. Now it’s shifted to reuse and refurbishment being too difficult, or refueling being impossible because of boil-off. Because keeping shit from boiling, apparently, is just unsolved engineering. ಠ_ಠ Not everything SpaceX does is genius the first time. But they’re ridiculously good at not persisting with stupid. The idea that a dozen rapid depot launches is somehow a gating concern, again, as a tech demo, we’re building the depot eventually, is just such a weirdly small and big concern.
      - jojobas 8mo ago
        > But they’re ridiculously good at not persisting with stupid. They are persisting with HLS though.
        8mo ago
muskstinks 8mo ago
They still need to prove that they can fire 33 of them in parallel reliable. Time will show, plenty of ignorant decisions from Musk inbetween so yeah...
- NetMageSCW 8mo ago
  They’ve already done that with multiple flights.
  - muskstinks 8mo ago
    With Raptor v3? The one they actually need to meet their payload targets? I thought that will happen in a few weeks. Whats your source?
sandworm101 8mo ago
>> Starship making LEO and testing propellant transfer (a humanity first) No. We have to stop listing to AI and twitter idiots trying to upsell stories into "firsts". The first propellant transfer, the first refueling of a spacecraft on orbit, was by the soviets nearly 50 years ago. "Progress 1 was the first of twelve Progress spacecraft used to supply the Salyut 6 space station between 1978 and 1981.[6] Its payload of 2,300 kilograms (5,100 lb) consisted of 1,000 kilograms (2,200 lb) of propellant and oxygen, as well as 1,300 kilograms (2,900 lb) of food, replacement parts, scientific instruments, and other supplies. Whilst Progress 1 was docked, the EO-1 crew, consisting of cosmonauts Yuri Romanenko and Georgi Grechko, was aboard the station. Progress 1 demonstrated the capability to refuel a spacecraft on orbit, critical for long-term station operations.[11] Once the cosmonauts had unloaded the cargo delivered by Progress 1, they loaded refuse onto the freighter for disposal." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_1 If SpaceX wants a first, then it would be the first transfer of cryogenic fuel. But even that could be debated as arguably Shuttle "transferred" cryogenic fuel between the tank and the orbiter during the launch process. So SpaceX might get the first of (cryogenic + on-orbit). Any simplification is a denial of what has already been done.

aethelraed 8mo ago

[dead]

mulmen 8mo ago

This mission is Artemis II. Is Artemis III the one with a lander?

JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
> Is Artemis III the one with a lander? Not anymore. Artemis III is now a LEO systems check [1]. Comparable to Apollo 9. (Side note: when did we switch from Arabic to Roman numerals?) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_III https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_III
- fluidcruft 8mo ago
  I don't know but the rockets and missiles have done that (Saturn V, Minuteman III, etc)
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- xattt 8mo ago
  There’s definitely “notation-fluidity” in Apollo mission patches. 10 is Roman, 11 is Arabic, 12 & 13 are Roman again.
  - FabHK 8mo ago
    Which is weird, because "X", "10", "XI", "XII", "12", "XIII", "13" are all unambiguous, while "11" could be read as "II" = 2 depending on the font. In other words, they switched exactly as to maximise ambiguity.

lexluthor38 8mo ago

I think you meant Artemis III in your comment. Good info though, didn't realize they were relying on those two other projects for the next one.

SyzygyRhythm 8mo ago

Starship "making LEO" is not a significant challenge--the existing flights have explicitly targeted a (very slightly) suborbital trajectory. They could have done otherwise at any point, but for now it's more important to guarantee that the stage comes down immediately. None of their current objectives require more than ~1/2 of an orbit. Starship v3 flying will be a significant leap, though. It's the first with the Raptor v3 engines and has many other improvements as well, such as updated grid fins and hot staging ring. It will be the first that achieves close to the intended capacity of ~100 tons. Propellant transfer is indeed a significant challenge. They have already demonstrated internal transfers between tanks, but not between spacecraft. Very exciting times ahead!

JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
> Starship "making LEO" is not a significant challenge Of course it is. I say this as someone who sturdied astronautics. You’re broadly correct, though. My point is the action shifts to Hawthorne and West Texas for the next year or so. Then pivots back to NASA for Artemis IV.
- sillysaurusx 8mo ago
  Odd. As a side note, your comment was posted [dead]. I vouched it to restore it back to life. This is the second time I’ve seen such insta-dead comments. (One was my own, and I thought I did something wrong. Now it looks like there’s some kind of bug in HN that’s killing on-topic comments when they’re posted.) Your comment wasn’t deep or insightful, but not every comment should be. A simple rejection of a premise is certainly on-topic. So it’s hard to argue that your comment was “bad”. That narrows the possibilities down to a bug in the algorithm. Maybe the mods are experimenting with ML auto classifying whether new comments should be killed or not.
  - JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
    Aww. Thanks. Wonder what I did to piss of YC.

ActorNightly 8mo ago

Starship is just obscene. The thing is never going to work for its designed purpose once you understand what the mission looks like (basically insane amount of refuel dockings while the thing is in orbit)

eru 8mo ago
What makes you think so?
JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
> insane amount of refuel dockings while the thing is in orbit What's wrong with this? Lots of launches is fine until we build the scale required to make a proper depot worthwhile. (Which, by the way, is part of Artemis's plans. Though currently it looks like a bunch of glued-together Starship tankers.)
- XorNot 8mo ago
  Also all those missions can be unmanned. If you want to get good at something then you do it a lot. The only question is whether the cost of flying all those missions would be prohibitive: by the stated goals, starship should be able to do the refueling missions cheaper then an SLS launch. Obviously if it can't then it's failed, but the point of it is cheap heavy lift to LEO which is very obviously quite valuable. Building a big specialty rocket to get to the moon is waste.
- ActorNightly 8mo ago
  People act like with Falcon, they basically just get it off the drone ship, fill er up, and she is good to go again. There is a shitload of repairs/maintenance that has to be done to Falcon vehicles after every launch. In space, you can't do that kind of repair/maintenance, you have to make sure the refueling is PERFECT. And this is with deep cryogenic propellants that very much like to boil off and cause pressure increases in the tanks they are contained. That problem hasn't even been touched yet. In order to make Spaceship X happen, they need to figure one refueling out, which is difficult given the fact that Raptors run on cryogenic propellant that likes to boil off, then they need to figure out how to do 10 in a row without any issues, which is exponentially difficult. And then there is the whole thing about everything working well for trip to Mars, and back. And if there is a configuration that exists that can do all of that, its very unlikely that a company under the leadership of someone as Musk can ever figure this out. For interplanetary travel, things need to start from either orbit or the moon. This has been known for quite some time.

jojobas 8mo ago

HLS isn't going anywhere.

JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
> HLS isn't going anywhere I've been hearing this about every SpaceX project for the last twenty years.
- jojobas 8mo ago
  Judging by the fact it's 2026 you must be writing this from the Mars base.
  - JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
    > Judging by the fact it's 2026 you must be writing this from the Mars base SpaceX was started in 2001. It announced Falcon 9 and messaged its reusability ambitions in 2005. Falcon 1 wasn’t going anywhere because making rockets is too hard. Falcons 5 and 9 weren’t going anywhere because medium lift is a different ball game. Falcon Heavy wasn’t going anywhere because timing that many engines impossible. Reuse is impossible. (The kerosene will clog everything.) Then, after refly: the total launch market will never be more than $5bn, so reuse is useless. More recently stainless steel can’t work. Now it’s shifted to reuse and refurbishment being too difficult, or refueling being impossible because of boil-off. Because keeping shit from boiling, apparently, is just unsolved engineering. ಠ_ಠ Not everything SpaceX does is genius the first time. But they’re ridiculously good at not persisting with stupid. The idea that a dozen rapid depot launches is somehow a gating concern, again, as a tech demo, we’re building the depot eventually, is just such a weirdly small and big concern.
    - jojobas 8mo ago
      > But they’re ridiculously good at not persisting with stupid. They are persisting with HLS though.
      - 8mo ago

muskstinks 8mo ago

They still need to prove that they can fire 33 of them in parallel reliable. Time will show, plenty of ignorant decisions from Musk inbetween so yeah...

NetMageSCW 8mo ago
They’ve already done that with multiple flights.
- muskstinks 8mo ago
  With Raptor v3? The one they actually need to meet their payload targets? I thought that will happen in a few weeks. Whats your source?

sandworm101 8mo ago

>> Starship making LEO and testing propellant transfer (a humanity first) No. We have to stop listing to AI and twitter idiots trying to upsell stories into "firsts". The first propellant transfer, the first refueling of a spacecraft on orbit, was by the soviets nearly 50 years ago. "Progress 1 was the first of twelve Progress spacecraft used to supply the Salyut 6 space station between 1978 and 1981.[6] Its payload of 2,300 kilograms (5,100 lb) consisted of 1,000 kilograms (2,200 lb) of propellant and oxygen, as well as 1,300 kilograms (2,900 lb) of food, replacement parts, scientific instruments, and other supplies. Whilst Progress 1 was docked, the EO-1 crew, consisting of cosmonauts Yuri Romanenko and Georgi Grechko, was aboard the station. Progress 1 demonstrated the capability to refuel a spacecraft on orbit, critical for long-term station operations.[11] Once the cosmonauts had unloaded the cargo delivered by Progress 1, they loaded refuse onto the freighter for disposal." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_1 If SpaceX wants a first, then it would be the first transfer of cryogenic fuel. But even that could be debated as arguably Shuttle "transferred" cryogenic fuel between the tank and the orbiter during the launch process. So SpaceX might get the first of (cryogenic + on-orbit). Any simplification is a denial of what has already been done.