tater

https://www.stokespace.com/nova/

That's sped up a lot.

This claim I see online all the time has always been absurd—and in the case of Mars, Musk states it explicitly. It will be dangerous and hard. It's not some sort of space resort. Bezos says it a different way—he says Earth us the best planet, and we will move humans to space to preserve Earth. Both are true.

Last night

This demo is teleoperated—they have rigs where people wear VR headsets, and detectors to watch their hands move—the VR is a camera view from the robot head. Since the DOF of the arm/hand is very human, it makes it easy to do these kinds of demos—but it also means humans moving can be training data for the automated part.

So they had an SBIR, now seeking SBIR Phase II. A ton of contractors here in NM (Sid Gutierrez, the Vast founder lives a few doors down from a buddy of mine here in ABQ) live off SBIRs. Think the max for Phase II is ~$1.2M, so chump change.

Appaently the original High Bay will be dismantled and replaced with "Gigabay."

(no static fire yet, though) That was last night... going vertical again:

Test of Epsilon S (static firing):

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.