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.