DAL59

Wouldn't it be more reasonable to use Crew Dragon for "Apollo 9", and use the SLS to visit gateway?

Checking back a few years later, congrats to Stratenblitz on being the first to complete this challenge!

+i 10i

So, SpaceX is surely going to put forward some proposal for NASA's call for new MSR plans, any speculation? Maybe Red Dragon, with the sample retrieval quadcopters and a sounding rocket? Since they want to maintain their original goal of 2030 instead of slipping to 2040, maybe even Starship could be sent to retrieve the samples.

However, they have put out a call for lower cost, quicker alternative missions

https://www.nasa.gov/nasatv/ MSR update is currently live MSR possibly delayed to NET 2040- its possible humans might land on Mars before the sample returns!

With all the tile issues SpaceX has been having (and the shuttle before them), should they have stuck to the evaporation cooling idea? Or just making the entry half of the starship out of a high melting point material (though this would reduce payload capacity).

The REAL best Artemis architecture

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20230003852/downloads/NEA_HSF_2023_PDC.pdf Paper on using Starship for crewed NEA mission

You have to remain within walking distance, but it still lets you have more useful EVA time as it reduces the outbound time.

I know this would be impractical, but could you do a Direct Ascent profile with a fully expended V3 Starship, a third stage with landing legs as its payload, with an Orion capsule on top? On a more practical note, why are they waiting to Artemis V or later before bringing a pressurized rover? Starship has more than enough capacity and they've been testing this thing for over a decade. Actually, its far worse than that! They're not even bringing an UNpressurized rover until Artemis V in 2029, with the pressurized rover scheduled for after that!? Even though we had a successful moon rover 55 years ago, NASA decided to have their astronauts walk around everywhere severely limiting their EVA time for the first two missions? Isn't an unpressurized rover a minor expense compared to the cost of SLS and 10 Starships? Isn't this limitation enough to counteract being able to stay for 7 days instead of 5, finally turning Artemis into a strictly worse Apollo? The one upside over Apollo I see repeated is that unlike Apollo the Artemis architecture is a sustainable program. But how? Neither the lunar Starship and Orion are reusable, and any plans for a surface base or ISRU are nebulous and in the far future. Its Apollo for the same cost, but with 1/4 the mission cadence, 10x the amount of launches required, and no rover.

I have a really stupid idea, whats the mass of the Blue Origin lander fully fueled? Could the easiest Artemis architecture just be putting the Blue Origin lander on a lunar trajectory with an expendable Starship launch?

But you would also be able to have a greater mass budget of fuel for braking on the probe.

Why has there been little discussion of using Starship for planetary probes? Wouldn't access to a cheap, super heavy launch vehicle allow missions like Dragonfly and the Uranus Orbiter to be much quicker by allowing direct routes instead of needing multiple gravity assists? I know Starship isn't an operational vehicle yet, but if NASA is willing to use it for as its plan for Artemis in just 2.5 years, why don't any missions slated for 5+ years in the future, when even pessimistically Starship will be available, plan to use it? A faster mission profile also reduces the plutonium requirements.

There's been a lot of discussion on this thread of shrinking Orion and/or adding a small lunar lander to SLS, but isn't there another option to get around the "too weak to go to LLO and back" problem? Why not have Falcon Heavy or an equivalent launch vehicle launch a kicker stage into LEO, Orion docks with it, gets boosted into a moon transfer, then uses its own fuel to capture into LLO and return. This would enable smaller lunar landers to be used for Artemis.

Still no pictures after 8 hours? Is this another Galileo antenna situation?

Are they attempting booster recovery on the first launch?

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-shares-progress-toward-early-artemis-moon-missions-with-crew/ Artemis II delayed 10 months to September 2025 III delayed to September 2026 Artemis I was six years behind schedule, so this is actually above average performance for this "program"

Would it be technically feasible to make a Falcon-Heavy derived HLS? One launch to send a small lander to LEO, a second launch to send a kicker stage to LEO to dock with the lander and take it to NRHO, no superheavy launch vehicles or orbital refueling required. If so, why aren't they doing this if it would be much cheaper and faster than either BM or SHLS?

What do you think are the odds of SLS III actually happening are? II is mostly built with a designated crew and will almost certainly happen, but III is currently a mission with no set plan or place to go.

How many Starship launches/launch attempts do you think SpaceX is aiming for 2024?

Could we please get M and L size aerospikes instead of just the small one? The medium could be a linear aerospike, based on the XRS-2200. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8c/Twin_Linear_Aerospike_XRS-2200_Engine_PLW_edit.jpg/1920px-Twin_Linear_Aerospike_XRS-2200_Engine_PLW_edit.jpg The large or XL could be another toroidal one based on Phil Bono's Rombus.

Yeah, it would be very much appreciated if they would clarify how "active" something needs to be. Does an anonymous upload need 10,000 views or just 10 to be exempt from deletion? How recently does the last interaction need to be?

https://help.imgur.com/hc/en-us/articles/14415587638029-Imgur-Terms-of-Service-Update-April-19-2023- "We will be focused on removing old, unused, and inactive content that is not tied to a user account." Just like the Photobucket 2017 nuke but on a far larger scale. I for one never used an imgur account and uploaded all images anonymously, meaning all my forum posts with embedded images will be gone , and I'm sure many other users probably hosted photos on imgur without an account. This will brick large parts of the forums! I can't really think of a solution, other than a bot with moderator perms that scrapes the entire forum, downloads all imgur images, then edits each post with a new image uploaded to another site.