NASA Human Landing System

[sevenperforce]

4 hours ago, tater said:

Yeah, methalox exhaust is ~3700 m/s, still, depending on how much the crasher drops the lunar orbital velocity (and how long it has to accelerate, it's still up to ~2000 m/s. As least the ejecta won't have lunar orbital velocity.

With something like the Blok D crasher stage profile for the N-1, where you stage at an altitude of around 4 km with 100 m/s of horizontal velocity, the crasher stage is going to impact so far away (and at such a relatively low speed) that you're more than completely clear of ejecta. 

[tater]

LOL

[Beccab]

Long series of tweets from Jeff Foust about the ongoing hearing of Bill Nelson, some with new info about HLS

45 minutes ago, tater said:

LOL

In particular, a quote that seems quite relevant here : “Senators don’t know how to shut up, I agree.” - Administrator Sen. Bill Nelson

[StrandedonEarth]

22 minutes ago, Beccab said:

In particular, a quote that seems quite relevant here : “Senators don’t know how to shut up, I agree.” - Administrator Sen. Bill Nelson

About the only thing opposing politicians can agree on is agreeing to disagree 

[sh1pman]

4 hours ago, tater said:

LOL

Because obviously the goal of HLS is not to land on the Moon (that’s a secondary objective), but to keep various firms in business using public money.

[sevenperforce]

18 hours ago, Beccab said:

Long series of tweets from Jeff Foust about the ongoing hearing of Bill Nelson, some with new info about HLS

In particular, a quote that seems quite relevant here : “Senators don’t know how to shut up, I agree.” - Administrator Sen. Bill Nelson

I mean I do want nuclear thermal.

[tater]

16 hours ago, sh1pman said:

Because obviously the goal of HLS is not to land on the Moon (that’s a secondary objective), but to keep various firms in business using public money.

This is the goal of SLS/Orion as well, so unsurprising.

[tater]

LOL:

 

 

[Beccab]

That BO post is so deceiving... "massive self funded investments" implying that it is in any way related to the NT HLS, when in reality their lander relies completely on NASA funding for all of its development (at least in the 6 billions that they asked nasa)

[YNM]

4 minutes ago, Beccab said:

when in reality their lander relies completely on NASA funding for all of its development (at least in the 6 billions that they asked nasa)

Yeah. Not planning for reusability when the programme you're dealing with is meant for continuous sustained lunar presence, and when one of the competitor is meant to be ultimately capable of exactly that (reuse), you may as well be shooting yourself in the foot.

Edited May 28, 2021 by YNM

[tater]

6 minutes ago, Beccab said:

That BO post is so deceiving... "massive self funded investments" implying that it is in any way related to the NT HLS, when in reality their lander relies completely on NASA funding for all of its development (at least in the 6 billions that they asked nasa)

This is interesting. We actually don't know the total costs for any of the lander proposals. We know what they asked NASA for to offset some % of costs.

My guess is that the Dynetics bid was likely the large majority of total cost (and their bid went up).

Assume for argument all the landers cost $10B actual cost to dev and land those 2 flights. Total cost.

Dynetics asked NASA for all the money, investing nearly $0.

Blue Origin asked NASA for ~$6B, investing $4B of their own money.

SpaceX asked NASA for ~$3B, investing $7B of their own money.

 

[Beccab]

Wasn't it confirmed that SpaceX will pay for half of the development of lunar starship? May be misremembering here

[tater]

2 minutes ago, Beccab said:

Wasn't it confirmed that SpaceX will pay for half of the development of lunar starship? May be misremembering here

It might have been. I was just throwing made up numbers out there to show that even if ll cost the same, the contribution of the company varies.

Maybe SpaceX cost is $6B, asked for 3.

Blue was $8B, asked for 6.

Dynetics was whatever they actually asked for (since they seem incompetent at this point).

[YNM]

10 hours ago, tater said:

I was just throwing made up numbers out there to show that even if ll cost the same, the contribution of the company varies.

Maybe SpaceX cost is $6B, asked for 3.

Blue was $8B, asked for 6.

Dynetics was whatever they actually asked for (since they seem incompetent at this point).

Although to be somewhat fair there isn't a lot of design that'd work commercially (right now) for a lunar lander... An orbit-surface shuttle still needs someone else to do on the orbit part. Meanwhile SS (and SH) is basically a competing architecture to SLS and Artemis, almost. Their commercial goal is basically providing everything vertically and not just focusing on one part - as the whole thing has to be set down in the first place.

So while picking SS makes sense now I honestly still hold out for some design that might be more useful once we have a surface-orbit transport need the same way we have surface-orbit transport needs on Earth (except we're doing downmass much more / as much as upmass on the Moon, at least short-term).

Edited May 29, 2021 by YNM

[tater]

27 minutes ago, YNM said:

So while picking SS makes sense now I honestly still hold out for some design that might be more useful once we have a surface-orbit transport need the same way we have surface-orbit transport needs on Earth (except we're doing downmass much more / as much as upmass on the Moon, at least short-term).

I'm actually a fan of a methalox "taxi" lander. Land LSS and leave it there. Use SS to fill smaller landers to take crew to the surface and back.

No need to a 200t (with cargo) lander every flight when a SS full of props in cislunar could refill landers for multiple crew transfers.

[YNM]

2 hours ago, tater said:

No need to a 200t (with cargo) lander every flight when a SS full of props in cislunar could refill landers for multiple crew transfers.

Point is however you need the fuel depots and tankers. Hence why if your goal is to put the very first stone then yes SS-based architecture makes sense.

But as we're heading towards the later phases we'll have to pick something like that shuttle/taxi from surface to orbit (and vice versa) more.

[RealKerbal3x]

BO continues to be salty:

This entire infographic is essentially moaning about how Starship is (shock horror) doing things that haven't been done before.

(this was posted on their website https://www.blueorigin.com/blue-moon/national-team)

Edited August 4, 2021 by RealKerbal3x

[RCgothic]

Not a good look.

[Beccab]

26 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

BO continues to be salty:

This entire infographic is essentially moaning about how Starship is (shock horror) doing things that haven't been done before.

(this was posted on their website https://www.blueorigin.com/blue-moon/national-team)

Jesus. Christ. Talk about not knowing when to shut up

Edit: the hell is "without dissimilar redundancy in abort engines" even supposed to mean???

Edited August 4, 2021 by Beccab

[tater]

BO forgot to put in step one, and it’s pretty tough. Actually produce a real launch vehicle.

At least their info graphic team can produce in a timely manner.

[RCgothic]

Also is not a good representation of what NASA had to say about the sum of risks of both programmes in general. Something something propulsion system. Something something long astronaut days.

[Beccab]

9 minutes ago, tater said:

BO forgot to put in step one, and it’s pretty tough. Actually produce a real launch vehicle.

It's seriously embarassing. Look at the launches part:
- for BO it is "only 3 national team launches - with proven systems"
- for Starship it is "10+ starship/superheavy launches - for just one lunar landing." What is BO doing with those launches, if not "just one lunar landing"? Ten trips to Alpha Centauri?

The funny part is that one mayor disadvantage of the NT lander for the HLS selection document are the many systems that can't be tested until the first crewed lunar landing, and they make nice infographics about how their tech is safer because it's "proven and flying today".

Even ignoring the stupid colours (starship bad, so make the stuff about it red), even their math doesn't check out, since the big bad text talks about "10+ launches for just one lunar landing" and the small, rotated text next to it says 8+ tanker launches.

When they aren't getting facts proposefully wrong, the rest of the infographic actually says all the most exciting parts of Starship lol

Edited August 4, 2021 by Beccab

[RealKerbal3x]

If you're launching expendable rockets, 10 launches per lunar landing is enormously expensive and impractical.

If your rockets are fully and rapidly reusable, costs are low and you can afford to launch much more frequently. 

Blue Origin is stuck in an oldspace mindset.

[tater]

They should add that SpaceX will do all that twice since  SpaceX is planning a complete, uncrewed test to the lunar surface.

NT will not even test everything all up until it has humans on it. Any issues wastes a multi-billion dollar SLS/Orion launch (not to mention crew risk).

They were smart enough to post this on their website and not Twitter. They’d get ripped to shreds.

The target audience for this is Congress.

Edited August 4, 2021 by tater

[tater]

From the selection document:

“Finally, numerous mission-critical integrated propulsion systems will not be flight tested until Blue Origin’s scheduled 2024 crewed mission.”