5 ms·

HLS isn't going anywhere.

by jojobas 7mo ago

JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
> HLS isn't going anywhere I've been hearing this about every SpaceX project for the last twenty years.
- jojobas 7mo ago
  Judging by the fact it's 2026 you must be writing this from the Mars base.
  - JumpCrisscross 7mo 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 7mo ago
      > But they’re ridiculously good at not persisting with stupid. They are persisting with HLS though.
      - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
        > They are persisting with HLS though Through what? What experimental data do you think renders this path foolish? Because I’m seeing a rapid-reuse heavy lift system with a fuel depot being built.
        jojobas 7mo ago
        I dunno, the fact that nobody can say how many fuel launches a moonshot is going to take, but at least 12? And that the lunar orbit chosen due to available energy makes rapid extraction impossible?
        JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
        > the fact that nobody can say how many fuel launches a moonshot is going to take, but at least 12? Nobody has ever done in-orbit propellant transfer or storage. We’re building it to see what those numbers shake out to, and how the propellant gets lost. (Boil off? Leaks? Incomplete transfer? Weird, unexpected degradation because space? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.) If it works, it dramatically reduces the cost of lunar and deep-space access. You’re saying that isn’t worth it because it isn’t certain? This is spaceflight. Nothing is certain. We have to weigh risks and payoffs. And then mitigate them. The time for mitigating this risk is this (and probably next) year. If the refuelling is dumb, the plan changes—Blue Origin is testing its own approach on the same timeline. Like, in Apollo 11 we fucked up the lander’s fuel budget. The astronauts were literally running out of fuel because a foreseeable problem, the surface being bumpier than expected, wasn’t contingency planned for over ten preceding missions. And we’re trying to do better than just retreading Apollo, because Apollo—strategically—failed as a platform for further manned spaceflight. > the lunar orbit chosen due to available energy makes rapid extraction impossible Isn’t NRHO an Orion limitation? Can Orion circularise on its own? Also, rapid extraction hasn’t been a requirement for the Moon since ever? If you want rapid extraction, plant a ship that can motor off the Moon home in one shot as an emergency-egress option down the road. In the meantime, you’re days away from help under ideal circumstances; realistically, we don’t have rescue options. Starship might be crap. But the bets look good, and the project is on the whole no more ambitious than the original Apollo missions. The criticisms you’re raising are either fundamental to the mission architecture because it’s developing a new spacefaring capability (refueling and rapid relaunch) or cost-cutting choices irrelevant to HLS (Orion’s second stages being efficient but underpowered).
    - muskstinks 7mo ago
      They are very good in finding money from somewhere to afford all of this. If this doesn't play out to be reducing costs for the avg american, Musk was able to get funded by the american tax payer nicely.
      - NetMageSCW 7mo ago
        Musk has saved the tax payer (through the government) billions of dollars on every project SpaceX has been involved with. They have earned money by providing vital Internet services to the disconnected and left behind in rural areas all over the world.
        muskstinks 7mo ago
        9 Million customers. I know a handful of people who use it as a secondary option who were everythign but 'left behind' Thats not a lot of people. And with the satelites risk and disruption to astronomy and the co2 usage, it might have affected more people negativly than positivly.
    - specialist 7mo ago
      What's your (hot) take on Starship's second stage reusability? My (noob) understanding is the challenge is achieving reuse (safety, reliability) while keeping the (economically necessary) 100 ton payload capacity.
    - cruffle_duffle 7mo ago
      To paraphrase, spacex is "making the impossible merely late"

HLS isn't going anywhere.

by jojobas 7mo ago

HLS isn't going anywhere.

JumpCrisscross 7mo ago

> HLS isn't going anywhere I've been hearing this about every SpaceX project for the last twenty years.

jojobas 7mo ago
Judging by the fact it's 2026 you must be writing this from the Mars base.
- JumpCrisscross 7mo 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 7mo ago
    > But they’re ridiculously good at not persisting with stupid. They are persisting with HLS though.
    - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
      > They are persisting with HLS though Through what? What experimental data do you think renders this path foolish? Because I’m seeing a rapid-reuse heavy lift system with a fuel depot being built.
      - jojobas 7mo ago
        I dunno, the fact that nobody can say how many fuel launches a moonshot is going to take, but at least 12? And that the lunar orbit chosen due to available energy makes rapid extraction impossible?
        JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
        > the fact that nobody can say how many fuel launches a moonshot is going to take, but at least 12? Nobody has ever done in-orbit propellant transfer or storage. We’re building it to see what those numbers shake out to, and how the propellant gets lost. (Boil off? Leaks? Incomplete transfer? Weird, unexpected degradation because space? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.) If it works, it dramatically reduces the cost of lunar and deep-space access. You’re saying that isn’t worth it because it isn’t certain? This is spaceflight. Nothing is certain. We have to weigh risks and payoffs. And then mitigate them. The time for mitigating this risk is this (and probably next) year. If the refuelling is dumb, the plan changes—Blue Origin is testing its own approach on the same timeline. Like, in Apollo 11 we fucked up the lander’s fuel budget. The astronauts were literally running out of fuel because a foreseeable problem, the surface being bumpier than expected, wasn’t contingency planned for over ten preceding missions. And we’re trying to do better than just retreading Apollo, because Apollo—strategically—failed as a platform for further manned spaceflight. > the lunar orbit chosen due to available energy makes rapid extraction impossible Isn’t NRHO an Orion limitation? Can Orion circularise on its own? Also, rapid extraction hasn’t been a requirement for the Moon since ever? If you want rapid extraction, plant a ship that can motor off the Moon home in one shot as an emergency-egress option down the road. In the meantime, you’re days away from help under ideal circumstances; realistically, we don’t have rescue options. Starship might be crap. But the bets look good, and the project is on the whole no more ambitious than the original Apollo missions. The criticisms you’re raising are either fundamental to the mission architecture because it’s developing a new spacefaring capability (refueling and rapid relaunch) or cost-cutting choices irrelevant to HLS (Orion’s second stages being efficient but underpowered).
  - muskstinks 7mo ago
    They are very good in finding money from somewhere to afford all of this. If this doesn't play out to be reducing costs for the avg american, Musk was able to get funded by the american tax payer nicely.
    - NetMageSCW 7mo ago
      Musk has saved the tax payer (through the government) billions of dollars on every project SpaceX has been involved with. They have earned money by providing vital Internet services to the disconnected and left behind in rural areas all over the world.
      - muskstinks 7mo ago
        9 Million customers. I know a handful of people who use it as a secondary option who were everythign but 'left behind' Thats not a lot of people. And with the satelites risk and disruption to astronomy and the co2 usage, it might have affected more people negativly than positivly.
  - specialist 7mo ago
    What's your (hot) take on Starship's second stage reusability? My (noob) understanding is the challenge is achieving reuse (safety, reliability) while keeping the (economically necessary) 100 ton payload capacity.
  - cruffle_duffle 7mo ago
    To paraphrase, spacex is "making the impossible merely late"