NASA Human Landing System

[Flavio hc16]

2 hours ago, RCgothic said:

Selecting Starship saved NASA over $14 billion dollars.

 

 

 

Under that article o saw a very interesting comment that I think shows a very interesting problem: ( I don't know if this would be better in the Artemis thread)

"SpaceX has fixed NASA's transportation problems but has now created political problems for NASA and especially Congress. And those political problems are destined to be exacerbated by the limitations of SLS/Orion.

Look at what's happening now with Commercial Crew on the ISS. At first glance, it seems like the ISS is perfectly capable of supporting two CC providers. But now that we have SpaceX steamrolling away with Crew Dragon operations, we see that the ISS is really quite marginal in its visiting vehicle cadence.

Once Starliner is operational, the providers can alternate on each crew rotation, and that should be fine, but accommodating just one non-operational demo mission that needs to dock to the ISS is a significant disruption to the operational roadmap. There are very limited windows where Boeing can squeeze the OFT-2 demo into the visiting vehicle schedule.

Artemis/HLS is going to have the same problem on steroids because of the annual launch cadence of SLS/Orion. Uncrewed demos are not a problem, but each crewed demo comes at the cost of that year's operational mission. That's a cost we can't afford to pay more than once, and that's why it's impractical to support more than one HLS provider under Option A.

Before the commercial HLS program, there was only one "Artemis 3" mission on the roadmap. That was to be the one and only crewed landing demo, boots on the moon, aspirationally targeting 2024. Then Artemis 4 would follow the next year, the first of a series of missions to lay the technical and physical foundations for the Artemis Basecamp.

There's no room in this roadmap for a second crewed demo by a second HLS Option A provider. There's no spare SLS/Orion sitting around for that.

From political and technical perspectives, having a second operational HLS provider would be preferable. But when the second provider comes online, they're going to have to mesh with the roadmap and cadence of the ongoing Artemis program and be capable of a complete operational Artemis mission on their first crewed sortie.

That's going to be difficult and costly for the second HLS provider, to develop a mission assurance rationale for NASA that the new provider is ready to be entrusted with a crewed mission profile that SpaceX would have demonstrated one or more times before.

The payoff, if a second HLS provider is onboarded, is that both providers will then be operating missions on a biennial cadence, alternating slots on the pathetic SLS manifest.

We want competition, we want dissimilar redundancy, and Congress wants a wider distribution of money/jobs. But the ISS is close to the minimum viable platform for competing space transportation services, and SLS/Orion falls short of a reasonable cadence for two HLS providers. Some would say it's barely minimum-viable for one."

[tater]

37 minutes ago, Flavio hc16 said:

From political and technical perspectives, having a second operational HLS provider would be preferable. But when the second provider comes online, they're going to have to mesh with the roadmap and cadence of the ongoing Artemis program and be capable of a complete operational Artemis mission on their first crewed sortie.

Short snip from a good post. All good points.

Yeah, a second provider means their first mission with people is "Demo-1" and not an operational mission, and since there's only 1 per year, you set the program back a year with a new provider under the best case.

SLS is a mess.

[Flavio hc16]

and here it goes half of the critics about the HLS choice from NASA, especially the part about not having a working design: "demonstrable lack of systems engineering"  yeah...right

Edited May 5, 2021 by Flavio hc16

[tater]

2 hours ago, Flavio hc16 said:

and here it goes half of the critics about the HLS choice from NASA, especially the part about not having a working design: "demonstrable lack of systems engineering"  yeah...right

Spoiler

 

[kerbiloid]

Still no working design, even when another one simplified hopper has landed.

[tater]

6 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Still no working design, even when another one simplified hopper has landed.

Meaning they have not yet built the actual flight article LSS?

Or are you suggesting SpaceX has no working design? Because the National team lander is similarly unbuilt, as is the Dynetics lander.

We see what they show us on their live streams, we see stuff Elon Musk tweets or says, and we see stuff they do out in the open. None of us have seen what they submitted to NASA. Do you think they sent a render with a cover letter saying "Pick us!" They send... a design. With loads of details, milestones planned, etc. NASA has seen those, and they saw the same documents from the others.

[kerbiloid]

2 minutes ago, tater said:

Meaning they have not yet built the actual flight article LSS?

Or are you suggesting SpaceX has no working design?

I mean, the landing water towers on short legs were good for the 1930s sci-fi, but have nothing to do with an actual lunar base.

Say, LEM. It looks proper, let alone that ugly.

[tater]

21 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

I mean, the landing water towers on short legs were good for the 1930s sci-fi, but have nothing to do with an actual lunar base.

Say, LEM. It looks proper, let alone that ugly.

A lunar base is a pressure vessel with life support than can land on the Moon.

I guess if it has a pointy roof it's right out? They could stage that part off if you find it offensive.

[tater]

Spoiler

A Boeing concept 1963:

 

 

[kerbiloid]

37 minutes ago, tater said:

A lunar base is a pressure vessel with life support than can land on the Moon.

A proper base.

Spoiler

***

With proper suits.

Spoiler

, lol.

***

Look, how stable look the Boeing huts, rather than lunar towers.

And how much easier is to avoid climbing from storey to storey.

And to connect the modules with catwalks to avoid the contact with regolith.

Edited May 6, 2021 by kerbiloid

[RCgothic]

Well starship can certainly ship more catwalk to the moon than either NT or Dynetics.

[kerbiloid]

47 minutes ago, RCgothic said:

Well starship can certainly ship more catwalk to the moon than either NT or Dynetics.

How close to each other should they be landed, compared to the low-life style Boeing-like and Dynetics-one, and how much stable are they, compared to the latter?

The only appropriate lunar thing SpaceX currently has, are the legs and the 9 m cylinders.

SpaceX can't change the fizzix.

[YNM]

22 hours ago, RCgothic said:

Selecting Starship saved NASA over $14 billion dollars.

Arguably at this point SpaceX is the major partner in Artemis, not NASA.

19 hours ago, Flavio hc16 said:

But now that we have SpaceX steamrolling away with Crew Dragon operations, we see that the ISS is really quite marginal in its visiting vehicle cadence.

Crew and cargo on both IDSS. Think no one foresaw that given there were happy with cargo on CBM instead. Probably warrants a 3rd IDSS adapter, maybe styled after the new airlock, that can be put on the nadir CBM when they need it.

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Still no working design, even when another one simplified hopper has landed.

A prototype is working better than a bunch of drawings signed off by the engineers.

There's a good reason things only make it's way into the building code a decade or two after it has start to see widespread adoption - they probably have ironed out all the kinks and you really can just follow the instructions.

[kerbiloid]

20 minutes ago, YNM said:

A prototype is working better than a bunch of drawings signed off by the engineers.

When the prototype has fruited into a successful mechanism. Otherwise vice versa.

[RCgothic]

Merlin will never work.

Falcon 1 will never fly.

Falcon 1 will never reach orbit.

Falcon 9 will never fly.

Grasshopper will never land.

F9-RDev will never land.

Falcon 9 will never land .

Falcon 9 will never fly twice.

Reuse is a stunt.

Falcon 9 will never fly twice within 6 months.

Falcon 9 will never fly twice within 3 months.

Falcon 9 will never fly twice within 2 months.

Falcon 9 will never fly twice within a month.

Falcon Heavy will never fly.

Dragon will never resupply the ISS.

Dragon will never be selected for commercial crew.

Dragon will never be crew rated.

Starlink will never launch.

Starlink will never provide a competitive service.

Raptor will never work.

Rockets will never be built in a field.

Hopper will never fly.

Starship will never fly.

Starship will never land.

Starship will never land intact.

Starship will never be selected for HLS.

Falcon 9 will never fly 10 times (Starlink 27 NET 9th May)

 

At this point it doesn't look smart to bet against SpaceX. SpaceX has the best engineers in the world. They have the best engineers because they tackle the hard problems and succeed, repeatedly. It's attractive. The best engineers want to work at a place like that. 

There comes a point where naysayers lack all credibility.

Edited May 6, 2021 by RCgothic

[YNM]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

When the prototype has fruited into a successful mechanism. Otherwise vice versa.

So no prototype at all is better, is that what you're saying ?

Wonder why we spent all that time qualifying stuff for buildings, and still have a requirement to test otherwise untested stuff.

[kerbiloid]

5 minutes ago, RCgothic said:

Merlin will never work.

Falcon 1 will never fly.

Falcon 1 will never reach orbit.

Falcon 9 will never fly.

Grasshopper will never land.

F9-RDev will never land.

Falcon 9 will never land .

Falcon 9 will never fly twice.

Reuse is a stunt.

Falcon 9 will never fly twice within 6 months.

Falcon 9 will never fly twice within 3 months.

Falcon 9 will never fly twice within 2 months.

Falcon 9 will never fly twice within a month.

Falcon Heavy will never fly.

Dragon will never resupply the ISS.

Dragon will never be selected for commercial crew.

Dragon will never be crew rated.

Starlink will never launch.

Starlink will never provide a competitive service.

Raptor will never work.

Rockets will never be built in a field.

Hopper will never fly.

Starship will never fly.

Starship will never land.

Starship will never land intact.

Starship will never be selected for HLS.

Falcon 9 will never fly 10 times (Starlink 27 NET 9th May)

Your prognoses were indeed strange.

Mine were about the actual economical effect of the partial reusability (still nothing known, except the brave enthusiastic slogans like "It made this twice cheaper!" with no actual numbers) and that Starship unlikely will get a thing soon and not reworked (still so).

3 minutes ago, YNM said:

So no prototype at all is better, is that what you're saying ?

Dynetics has the prototypes. It has engineering problems to solve.

SpaceX doesn't. So, Dybetics is better, is that what you're saying?

And yes, saved money are better than spent with no fruition.

[YNM]

Just now, kerbiloid said:

Dynetics has the prototypes.

Where ?

[kerbiloid]

1 minute ago, YNM said:

Where ?

Idk exactly, but somewhere there

Spoiler

https://exterrajsc.com/prototype-lunar-crew-module-to-dynetics-from-snc/2021/02/10/

[YNM]

7 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

prototype-lunar-crew-module

And they somehow have negative mass in the overall design ?

That's even less acceptable. It's like wanting to have a house and already having all the furniture you want to put in but they can't fit through the doors or something.

Better make the house first then buy the furniture that'd actually fit through.

Edited May 6, 2021 by YNM

[kerbiloid]

9 minutes ago, YNM said:

And they somehow have negative mass in the overall design ?

They have a prototype to decrease the mass.

The base module of Mir was overweighted by 5 tonnes.
They were redistributed between Quantum-1 and -2, and Mir has happily worked in orbit.

SpaceX currebtly doesn't have even this.

[YNM]

10 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

The base module of Mir was overweighted by 5 tonnes.
They were redistributed between Quantum-1 and -2, and Mir has happily worked in orbit.

Except that this is a lander, which means you have to make them land and lift off again on their own from the lunar surface.

Maybe when we have ISRU* it'll change (which is why I still think their design is a good contender for future autonomous station - surface cargo transfer) but we don't have that for the first landing under current plans.

* not sure what ISRU works on the Moon. There's methane on Mars, if their design ever make it for a far-future Mars station - surface transfer vehicle.

Edited May 6, 2021 by YNM

[kerbiloid]

5 minutes ago, YNM said:

Except that this is a lander, which means you have to make them land and lift off again on their own from the lunar surface.

A lander can be splitted into two landers.
Or two into three.

Why do you think, SpaceX won't get same trouble with mass balance?
Have they ever created a lunar module?
They just have a 9 m wide pipe.

[YNM]

5 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Why do you think, SpaceX won't get same trouble with mass balance?

Because their vehicle is ultimately designed not just for Trans-Lunar Injection, but for Trans-Mars Injection ? And for Mars operations rather than lunar operations, which is more massive than the Moon and you need more dV operating around it ?

They don't have a specific lunar crew design, but they already have a crew capsule design. Wouldn't surprise me if they just nicked the pressurized parts and put it inside Starship, on the very top.

Edited May 6, 2021 by YNM

[kerbiloid]

7 minutes ago, YNM said:

Because their vehicle is ultimately designed not just for Trans-Lunar Injection, but for Trans-Mars Injection ?

Because their vehicle still doesn't exist even as a prototype.