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Exactly, since to be an LLO lander, it needs to be at the larger size of that range, ~45t because it needs to be able to brake itself and Orion into LLO, which means the lander and Orion need to be sent to TLI together... huh. Let's go back in time to before SLS, in the days of Constellation! Orion was launched to LEO on top of the cursed Ares I. The cargo-only Ares V was designed to send 71t to TLI (~188t to LEO). 71 tons to TLI, wonder why they pulled that random number out of a hat? Altair was ~45t. Orion was ~26t. 45+26=71 Note that if they had put Orion on top of Ares V, it would have had a lower throw to TLI, it got to 71t to TLI by launching with just Altair, then docking with Orion (sent to LEO with the cursed Ares I (the "cursed" part is required!)). It was never a single stack vehicle for multiple reasons. Everyone at NASA (and presumably Ballast, the current NASA Admin knew in Senate when he championed SLS) knew this. So a vehicle that can never get more than 40-something tonnes to TLI has been useless from day 1. This was always the primary beef with SLS/Orion, it is, and always has been a rocket to nowhere. The Artemis lunar architecture is basically Constellation's—because it has to be. The problem is that SLS is completely incapable of filling the hole left by canceling Ares V (which was not gonna work anyway of course, it had its own problems). Earlier make-work concepts for SLS/Orion was lousy missions like ARM, because that was all they could think of it doing. Bridenstine was making lemonade with the lemon that is SLS, using the only tool he had that could help, commercial providers. Since that was on the table, why not make sure the mission has good long term goals? Decent duration stays? Check! Incorporate in-space reuse of mission elements for a more sustainable program, and some TRL bumps? Check! More humans to the surface? Check! JB is smart enough to know that the proposals that came out of Artemis actually kill SLS. Any that can possibly work obviate SLS in the long run. The sooner, the better.

Different EVs might also have different fire risks.

ICPS shows being built by Boeing and ULA, while Centaur shows just ULA. Centaur is already crew rated, and is unambiguously a better stage than ICPS/EUS I think—it's arguably one of the best rocket stages ever built. I think the issue with a Centaur based lander (XEUS) was refilling the tank (per Shelby a no no), and obviating SLS (also Shelby).

in progress Entry burn

As soon as they needed the integration tower this was true. The 10th was only if they could fix it without laying hands on it.

It's training for something... answering would probably be a TOS, tbh.

To be fair the garbage sorting is to sort people into the bin of marginally employable people they can give money to for the make-work of sorting stuff that gets subsequently put in the landfill anyway. Maybe once robots do that sort of work they can hire the same people to polish the robots? The killer app for distributed humanoid robot adoption will be elder care assuming they are capable of this. Sorting batteries into slots is stuff a robot arm could do—the human form assuming it can lift someone out of bed, and put them into a wheelchair, or move them to and from the toilet, shower, etc—THAT is what they need to demonstrate. 24 hour human caregivers are incredibly expensive—$400-$500/day, so $150k-$180k a year. Even if the bots are not yet super communicative (LLMs are pretty good here already, so they WILL be, just to have conversations with their charges), a single real person could be a caregiver supervisor, with robots staying overnight (better for the human employee, who is not there 24/7), and spending a few hours a day with each patient. Patients get human interaction, but can have the robot bathe and help them with the toilet, perhaps cook, etc. This is a vast market.

This. Minus huge landed mass on the lunar surface, going back at all is pointless and stupid. Flags and footprints—been there, done that. A real base, or stay home.

Luckily for you, single stack SLS missions to accomplish literally anything useful are not possible, and can never be possible!

Initial talks about what a Gateway lander might look like (Gerst presented this): 36t min. 43t max. Doesn't list requirements, just min masses for components tells us something. The Ascent Element is at min 2X the mass of the Apollo LM, nearly 3X at max. Here, scroll down to Attachment F (a zip) https://sam.gov/opp/d5460a204ab23cc0035c088dcc580d17/view Bullet points (for initial landing, higher requirements for all landings beyond that—reuse, 4 crew vs 2, etc): ! Next launch window for what ? SLS, lol?

As you so thoroughly explain after this, the actual requirements completely disallow such a small lander. It MUST be able to deal with aborts that can then phase with Gateway/NRHO, so a crew duration of weeks. This ignores the fact that SLS/Orion is a garbage stack for this use case, and will never be able to comanifest a lander. If a single stack launch was desired for SLS, we first need to invent a time machine, and spec SLS to be useful for this. Smaller Orion? When was Orion first started, 20 years ago? Either our time machine deals with that (Shelby has an "accident" via time machine?), or tag on another 20 years. Artemis exists as a program because Bridenstine was put in place with a lousy, expensive vehicle that exists to move dollars to districts, and came up with something actually useful for it to do. Was the useful thing landing humans on the Moon? NO. That is not the point of Artemis. The point of Artemis is to get "new space" to build cislunar stuff using the COTS/CCV mechanism. Just as the point of SLS/Orion was to throw money at old Shuttle contractors and NASA centers, the point of Artemis is to throw money at "new space"—albeit much less money than SLS/Orion (pushing what, $50B now?)—to have in house capability in the future that allows for actual usefulness. Excellent point, and also the new suit size is large, so more volume to store those. Gotta wonder about the bearings on the rotating parts and dust, too. More volume really helps here.

The teleoperation training farm part is interesting. Seem to be doing "hand" tasks as they might FSD on cars. With "nothing but nets" they show Dojo human driving—from the POV of a Tesla—and it learns driving. They seem to be training the bot the same way, but "showing" it a bot being "driven."

Only Starliner relevant because it's the payload, this is a ULA issue:

The $20M is for just the launch, not the payloads. Several years ago, a SpaceX engineer giving a talk at a conference said their marginal internal cost was ~$25M a launch (I posted the vid here at the time, but it was pulled down—possibly because he talked about those numbers). This was long before they were flying 20 times+, and before they recovered fairings much if at all. So $20M seems pretty reasonable as a current ballpark.

Teleoperation suffers from the problems that Mars rovers face, heck, even lunar - Earth teleoperation has lag issues. I think vehicles with autonomy—give them a mission, and even ideal places to look, and the robot goes there itself, and can even notice potentially interesting finds autonomously. This could likely be done now. Having people do cool stufff when they are there is great, and they will get a ton done, fast—but it's not about what generates more knowledge per unit time, I was talking about cost efficiency. The logistical overhead of human crew is huge (and hence cost).

No need for the spoiler, that's even an official video The youtube has not, though the crappy twitter video version has been (YT one is better).

He also says going public in a few years... though this must be Starlink I think, not SpaceX.

Just about. That is internal cost, not retail, of course. The only way we'll see actual retail cost reduction is with competition.