tater

FTS apparently already installed on the ship before it rolled out

in progress:

Nonetheless, they still test and simulate everything. Going fast doesn't mean they're reckless.

Note that the above is actually a rationale for Gateway as perhaps the crew stays there while the refills happen, so if there is an issue, they can camp out til another Ferry can pick them up. Also, for clarity the HLS is V2, the surface to LEO ships are V3 (figured the tall one not best for a lander). It works even better if the Ferry is V3.

They've been working this for a long time, look at the hardware ahead of launches (eqp rich). There will be problems, but they'll get data and sort them. Second pad is very near completion—if they wreck the current pad, they can't fly until they finish the new pad... if they wait for the backup before flying, they can't fly until they finish the new pad. Seems like no difference to me.

Yeah, it's a sim that predates the flight. They are substantially less seat of the pants than their critics claim.

Per Ken's video math, a SS v3 depot (2300t full) takes 9-10 flights to fill totally, or ~6 for enough to just to top off HLS. Assume HLS is V2 height, so 1500t props. 90t dry +10t cargo (per Ken's video). That gets a ferry flight with 8 launches—which counts leaving a depot in orbit. The ferry has 10.2 km/s of dv, 2.9 km/s more than it needs for a NRHO RT, 2 km/s more than it needs for LLO. The Ferry needs ~170t of props to return from NRHO to LEO. That means the Ferry actually arrives at NRHO with an extra 320t of props. HLS needs 350t of props to do a RT from NRHO to the lunar surface. The HLS starts with 10.2 km/s in LEO, and arrives at NRHO with 490t of props for landing. This means it can do a RT from NRHO, and it comes back to our Ferry with 33t of residual props... It needs 350t to do a RT. The crew can transfer to the Ferry (or Gateway if that's a thing), the Ferry then gives HLS 320t of props, and HLS can now do another RT. This closes, though the next flight comes back to Gateway/NRHO with just 3t of props remaining—so Ferry heads home with HLS at just 323t props. Of course the next crew arrives with 320t more props. So now HLS has 643t of props, meaning the refill happens first (optimally before, then after flight, donating a few 10s of tons, then the rest later. Regardless, this CONOPS is completely sustainable.

As has been said (and shown) many times in this thread and the SpaceX thread, the mere existence of a functional SpaceX HLS obviates SLS.

The military has not paid the gajillion bucks SpaceX has risked on Starlink, they have. The military uses electricity, too. They buy it like everyone else. Or phone service. Or beef. They're not bankrolling that stuff. The only money spent on Starlink by the Pentagon is whatever they are paying for their Starshield sats, or buying subscriptions to Starlink service like everyone else.

The hard part is scale. For EVs right now, it's Tesla, the rest are not making money—you can't lose thousands per car, and make it up in volume. Optimus has a lot of potential as well. They will continue to increase in value. My point relative to the launch market is that there's a cap on the current launch market. The demand for launch times the cost of a launch. As retail cost drops, the total value of the launch market drops—the unknown is how much lower cost can drive increased demand. Most here presumably think cheap launch creates out science fiction future—but those new concepts for what to do with cheap launch are not a thing yet. The launch business is not going to be useful for most starups I think. As I said above, they have to come in to the market at a price that undercuts the lowest cost to LEO, and indeed the lowest the current leader, SpaceX, could drop prices if they needed to. We know an F9 launch is under $25M, but not by how much. That means any medium-lift that comes out and charges below current F9 retail could find SpaceX just dropping their price just below the newcomer. To win that spiral the newcomer needs an internal cost to LEO that is lower than F9.

I'll be back east, but beats Monday when I'll be on a plane.

Abject nonsense. Spaceforce has bought their own constellation from them, starshield.

It's a weaksauce business compared to actually good markets to pursue. Starlink is set to make a profit this year (per Shotwell), and she thinks that Starship will actually become SpaceX's primary revenue stream in the near future. Not exactly sure how—except that sans competition, any cost savings SpaceX manages simply goes in their pocket, since they have no reason to leave money on the table until there is real competition. Say NG starts flying, and can launch at better than F9 retail cost/kg which is ~$2500 right now ($62M for an F9, 23.8t to LEO). SpaceX F9 internal cost is closer to $1050/kg ($25M/23.8t). To get to the same place NG would need to recover the fairings, or have a few million dollars lower cost for refurb plus stage 2 (to cover the lost fairings). That's still an internal cost of ~$45M a flight for the same price per kilo. Hard to see it competing with F9, much less Starship. Assuming they ever recover stage 2 of SS, then the cost is operations plus props—single digit millions per flight, for 100+ tonnes to LEO. Even at $10M/flight, that's an internal cost of $100/kg... insane. SpaceX already has NASA as their largest non-Starlink customer. Chump change compared to Tesla for Musk. I think the only way for them to make more business is space is for some new industry to develop up there... no idea what it could be, but we have not seen it yet, whatever it is.

Yes. The commercial launch market is only worth a few billion a year in total (ignoring national launches that necessarily fly on national LVs—US, Russia, China, EU. As SpaceX drops the cost/kg towards their nominal internal cost very close to ~$1000/kg the business case is worse and worse for newcomers unless they can come out of the gate at that sort of internal marginal cost.

Smallsat launch was killed dead as soon as F9 started transporter missions—that and just cost per kg.

About a week or two ago we got a fair amount. Melted quick.

Presumably WDR:

Artemis was making lemonade out of the lemon NASA has—SLS/Orion. Cancelling Artemis would be a bad idea, but cancelling SLS/Orion would not. All the partners actually want is dusty spacesuits with their own flags on the shoulders, how they get there doesn't matter as long as the US taxpayer foots the large majority of the bill (I could say the same about so many international projects). As long as there is the timelines don't change substantially, not sure I see a problem with keeping Artemis, dumping SLS. Launch crew with existing crew vehicles (which for now is Dragon). Do Earth orbit Rendezvous with a tanked up transit vehicle (presumably a Starship variant). Land with HLS—first Starship, then the BO lander. Return to LEO, disembark crew to CCV, back home to Earth.

Now is the time to kill things that need killing. NASA is facing some issues with a few programs: 1. ISS decommission, and what if anything replaces it. 2. Gateway, which partially came into being to bring all the ISS partners along to cislunar space. 3. SLS/Orion, which is very linked to #2—since the system is lousy, and can't do anything else. The commercial stations program doesn't have enough money or momentum to ensure we have astronauts continuously in space. At some point very soon that needs to either happen, or ISS runs out of time without a replacement. Gateway has always been kinda garbage, but since the primary NASA ISS partner was not interested in Gateway, it seems like an even bigger waste of money. The international partners for Gateway right now seem to want boots and flags on the lunar surface, and Gateway was the cost of entry—so it can go away as long as they still get their boots/footprints (sorry, Canada, no arms required except the ones attached to people). SLS/Orion has been the largest share of the cash so far, and has done nothing useful yet. When fully operational, the capabilities can never be useful enough to justify the cost. Every single RS-25 on the core stage costs as much as an entire Starship stack. The SRBs cost a billion $. It's completely insane for a vehicle incapable of any useful mission. Orion, assuming they can sort the heat shield, can at least hold crew and get them home, hopefully. Maybe the best path is to fly the stages already 100% complete, then trash SLS. Keep Orion, but launch on another vehicle (New Glenn?). Work on an improved Orion CM with grossly more dv, and maybe stick it on top of Super Heavy (with an expendable stage 2)?

The decision not to return the crew was a mistake I think (personally). If you want to talk politics in the most tangential way, I think they (DC Admin/Nelson) didn't want to be on the hook for a very public disaster in an election year. As I said, I was hearing from someone very involved in human spaceflight that it was not at all unanimous at NASA—went from people who were wanting to be super careful, to, "They're test pilots, they signed up for this, and Boeing says it's OK." (specific statement friend said involved testicular fortitude I think ) Note that Boeing had powerful incentives to not have a disaster, either—so I took them at their word on their risk assessment (and it worked fine as we saw). Having 2 would indeed be better. (I'm still using my starliner NASA Flight Operations mousepad, FWIW)

It's a fixed price contract, if NASA requires another flight, then Boeing would have to eat it—that's the whole point of "fixed price." It's not like the current admin has been having NASA throw extra money at them, I don't think who is NASA Admin matters here, but so I agree there's no way for them to bail out Boeing here without it becoming political. I think the Atlas launches would be easily sold, heck, Amazon would probably buy them all, they need to move fast or Kuiper is DOA (do they get an extension if they don't launch half by mid 2026, or is whatever they have up all they get? (personally I think there's no possible way at this point sans making SpaceX an offer to sell them a couple hundred launches in the next 2 years so good they'd stop launching starlinks). I wonder of buying Starliner would help BO at all? It has problems, but I think it can be fixed, the question is would a clean sheet be better/faster for BO than buying Starliner?