Canopus

Considering the launch cadence of manned Chinese Spacecraft and current plans to build a modular Space station, i highly doubt it will be the chinese. Next on the moon will be the ISS partners. With or without SpaceX as on of many launch providers.

https://spacenews.com/blue-origin-studying-repurposing-of-new-glenn-upper-stages/

atleast something we agree on. Orion will never be in LLO, only the Lander. LLO is harder for station keeping (Leaving your capsule in orbit during long missions) Harder on Thermal systems, in case of a polar orbit, access from the surface to an Orbiting vehicle is also limited during long a surface stay. The only radiation advantage is that in LLO a big part of the Sky is covered by the moon as a radiation shield. Future stations and propellant depots won't be in LLO so why not have Landers now that are already up to the task, of Landing from and returning to a higher more stable Orbit? Musk is already working on that with Starship.

Yeah feels like: „Apollo went to LLO so all lunar missions have to go there“. You might want to carry the SM for some limited abort scenarios or leave CM and SM behind and stage from high earth or lunar orbits, DST style. Still i think any credible Mars mission is so far off that it probably isn‘t worth speculating too much.

Whats this Forums Obsession with Low Lunar Orbits? And even if you would absolutely need it to go to LLO you probably could with ACES or something like that. And i never heard anything about Mars return being impossible, got any Scource for that? (Not that it would matter much since any Mars mission is decades away and might not even use a direct return anyway)

Missions beyond LEO? Once distributed launch is demonstrated and practiced by ULA and maybe Blue Origin i could imagine them to ditch SLS for New Glenn or Vulcan.

How would switching to Commercial launchers for EM-1 EM-2 solve the EUS delay?

Integrating Orion and FH would probably take longer and be more expensive that just sticking with SLS and launch half a year or something later. I‘m sure Orion will survive SLS and eventually launch on another Rocket but right now this is nothing but a play to appease the Commercial launcher fans.

Yeah this isn't going to happen, someone is desperate to launch EM-1 while he is still president.

Upper stage refueling seems to be planned in blue Origins future roadmap but new glenn won't start flying with it. Who knows how far off it is.

New Glenn seems to get 13 tons to GTO, 2 tons more than Ariane 5. So without a refueling strategy similar to ACES, i wouldn't call it an SLS killer.

Boeing doesn‘t seem to do an inflight abort test.

The pilot/s that would accompany tourists on a dragon flight.

Does the new Trunk still has the ability to hold unpressurized Cargo, or would that compromize the ability of the abort system?

Who would be the pilot? Do they train their own Astronauts?

i‘d like to see the non NASA astronauts they are flying to space

Since SpaceX is now not going to fly Astronauts on reused Dragon 2s it is kinda pointless to have reusable Abort system. true

Both SpaceX and Boeing chose an Abort system that stays with the Capsule all the way to Orbit for some reason. But no i don‘t think these engines are ever used on a normal mission.

That would be overkill. those are only Abort engines.

So will these Airbags be used on a normal mission as Well? Will Starliner touch down on land like Orion was supposed to?

Stage 2 doing so much work

just wait for some inevitable design revisions on „Starship“ and they will be.

Blue Origin won‘t have to copy the incredible shrinking Starship, they will already have New Glenn when it launches.

It will be the ISS Partners minus Russia maybe.

@Xd the great did you ever think about applying to get into SpaceX PR departement? Because you should get payed for all the hard work you are doing.