Who will be next to land people on the Moon?

[sevenperforce]

19 minutes ago, tater said:

Yeah, exactly.

I'm seriously wondering about the plume interaction with the unprepared lunar surface for something as huge as Starship, too.

With 150 tonnes to LEO, there are any number of fully-reusable lunar landers that could be proposed. Starship could also send a smaller lander direct to TLI in a single launch and then aerobrake itself back. Not sure which would be more efficient. 

Then with the Chomper you could bring the lander back and enter together, if desired.

[tater]

5 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

With 150 tonnes to LEO, there are any number of fully-reusable lunar landers that could be proposed. Starship could also send a smaller lander direct to TLI in a single launch and then aerobrake itself back. Not sure which would be more efficient. 

Then with the Chomper you could bring the lander back and enter together, if desired.

True. Seems like with that sort of mass to orbit, refilling Starship would be a waste of time. Launch to the best orbit it can do (then Starship returns), then let the lander do TLI, LOI, and landing. That would result in a sortie type lander. If NASA is still all about Gateway, then another Starship could loft a tug to Gateway (something NASA says they want, anyway), that tug can retrieve the lander from the other launch to Gateway.

Heck, cargo Starship really does enable the old STS concept (with Starship filling the Shuttle role of the system).

[sevenperforce]

Just now, tater said:

True. Seems like with that sort of mass to orbit, refilling Starship would be a waste of time. Launch to the best orbit it can do (then Starship returns), then let the lander do TLI, LOI, and landing. That would result in a sortie type lander. If NASA is still all about Gateway, then another Starship could loft a tug to Gateway (something NASA says they want, anyway), that tug can retrieve the lander from the other launch to Gateway.

Heck, cargo Starship really does enable the old STS concept (with Starship filling the Shuttle role of the system).

The complexity and challenges of large-scale orbital propellant transfer dictate a future mission architecture. We KSP players think nothing of refueling, but reality is not so easy. If ACES proves to be successful and we can readily toss props around on orbit, then we could see it form an integral part of the reusable lunar architecture, with a dedicated man-rated lander operating from something like the Gateway (or at least a DRO or frozen LLO), refueled at each mission by a reusable command module sent onto TLI by Starship. 

If orbital refueling proves to be more of a challenge, then we are more likely to see a single vehicle making the entire round-trip with direct ascent from the lunar surface and back to Earth. 

Paradoxically, the very thing which enables Starship's BLEO aspirations--orbital refueling--is the thing that would make it not nearly as useful BLEO.

[NSEP]

SpaceX and Blue Origin are the most likely i think. Commercial spaceflight doesn't have the same amount of budget cuts and political stuff going on that could slow down their development.

I think China might have the first governmental Moon Landing. Their space program, suggesting from recent events is going quite smoothly. NASA, maybe, but not without the help of commercial spaceflight.

 

[Ol’ Musky Boi]

3 hours ago, tater said:

Yeah, exactly.

I'm seriously wondering about the plume interaction with the unprepared lunar surface for something as huge as Starship, too.

That'll probably be the first task of any moon base programme, preparing landing/launching pads by making bricks from the lunar regolith. You don't want to sandblast your shiny new base every time you send a new crew. Moon bricks are also great for building lunar habitats, if you can pile enough mass on your base then it doesn't hold in any internal pressure. It also adds a lot of radiation shielding.

3 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Even without actually landing Starship on the Moon, the ability to send 150 tonnes to LEO for unbelievably cheap enables virtually any lunar landing architecture anyone would want. 

I thought Starship now only did 100 tonnes? Still plenty for a moon mission regardless, especially with orbital / lunar refuelling.

[tater]

36 minutes ago, Ol’ Musky Boi said:

I thought Starship now only did 100 tonnes? Still plenty for a moon mission regardless, especially with orbital / lunar refuelling.

That number was stated with the on;y shown vehicle being a crew version.

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

14 hours ago, tater said:

I'm seriously wondering about the plume interaction with the unprepared lunar surface for something as huge as Starship, too.

They may just splash in a lunar sea.

 

[todofwar]

I believe SpaceX timelines about as far as I can throw an F9. Besides that, end of the day, what does Musk want with the Moon? He wants to colonize Mars and his pie in the sky architecture for that does not involve the Moon. SpaceX has not even tried to enter into the commercial lander provider race which now has several serious players and a commitment from NASA to buy. They will probably be involved as a launch provider, but they have made 0 moves towards becoming a lander provider even though the new program is set to mimic a contest SpaceX already won once. My money is still on NASA. People are going nuts over China landing a couple small landers and a rover, talk to me when they land a rover the size of a mini cooper on Mars. Only threat to NASA being first is if the next president decides to once again shift focus to humans on Mars which is entirely possible, but to be honest when it comes to outer space there is NASA and then everyone else. It's like they are an NFL team and everyone else is still playing at the college level. 

Edited March 25, 2019 by todofwar

[Ol’ Musky Boi]

2 minutes ago, todofwar said:

People are going nuts over China landing a couple small landers and a rover, talk to me when they land a rover the size of a mini cooper on Mars.

I think its not so much the rovers that impress people but rather the amount of progress the CNSA has made in such a short amount of time. For sure their achievements don't hold a candle to NASA, but they've certainly got a lot more direction than NASA at the moment - particularly in manned spaceflight.

[todofwar]

2 minutes ago, Ol’ Musky Boi said:

I think its not so much the rovers that impress people but rather the amount of progress the CNSA has made in such a short amount of time. For sure their achievements don't hold a candle to NASA, but they've certainly got a lot more direction than NASA at the moment - particularly in manned spaceflight.

I think NASA has a bit of "trying to do everything" syndrome, but it's worth remembering right now NASA is focused on developing technology to enable Science. And we have compelling science cases to go just about everywhere, and one astronaut on the Moon probably equals ten or more Curiosity class rovers on the Moon. This gets into the whole manned vs unmanned argument but I think NASA is doing better than people think. 

[tater]

20 minutes ago, todofwar said:

I believe SpaceX timelines about as far as I can throw an F9. Besides that, end of the day, what does Musk want with the Moon? He wants to colonize Mars and his pie in the sky architecture for that does not involve the Moon. SpaceX has not even tried to enter into the commercial lander provider race which now has several serious players and a commitment from NASA to buy.

Actually, they did submit something from what I have read.

 

Quote

They will probably be involved as a launch provider, but they have made 0 moves towards becoming a lander provider even though the new program is set to mimic a contest SpaceX already won once. My money is still on NASA.

They will certainly be involved as a launch provider, since SLS isn't doing anything useful as far as I can tell. Any money on NASA should be on NASA buying a service from someone else. A NASA run lander, a la SLS/Orion isn't a thing.

 

Quote

People are going nuts over China landing a couple small landers and a rover, talk to me when they land a rover the size of a mini cooper on Mars. Only threat to NASA being first is if the next president decides to once again shift focus to humans on Mars which is entirely possible, but to be honest when it comes to outer space there is NASA and then everyone else. It's like they are an NFL team and everyone else is still playing at the college level. 

Landing robots is what NASA does best.

5 minutes ago, todofwar said:

I think NASA has a bit of "trying to do everything" syndrome, but it's worth remembering right now NASA is focused on developing technology to enable Science. And we have compelling science cases to go just about everywhere, and one astronaut on the Moon probably equals ten or more Curiosity class rovers on the Moon. This gets into the whole manned vs unmanned argument but I think NASA is doing better than people think.  

They do great with robots, no question. SLS/Orion is a train wreck, however (or a dumpster fire, take your pick).

The EUS is on hold, that cripples SLS to be pretty much useless. Comanifesting cargo with Orion doesn't allow anything useful to go to the Moon. The only way SLS/Orion is involved in landing humans is if pretty much all the real work is done by commercial partners.

Edited March 25, 2019 by tater

[todofwar]

32 minutes ago, tater said:

They do great with robots, no question. SLS/Orion is a train wreck, however (or a dumpster fire, take your pick).

I suppose it becomes a philosophical question, but did NASA land on the moon before or did Boeing? And is the SLS train wreck on Boeing or NASA? I think the latter is more on how the contract bid process and need to provide jobs in districts overrode other concerns, which is what always happens with federal projects. And of course NASA is capped at what it is allowed to pay civil servants. But the CLPS program I think shows NASA might actually be learning from the lessons of SpaceX, namely that the best use of tax payer dollars is to create a competition among commercial providers with NASA as the main but not necessarily only customer. The big question becomes, in regards to this thread, if we have a SpaceX launch for a Moon Express manned lander and China buys the first trip, who got credit? 

[tater]

15 minutes ago, todofwar said:

I suppose it becomes a philosophical question, but did NASA land on the moon before or did Boeing? And is the SLS train wreck on Boeing or NASA? I think the latter is more on how the contract bid process and need to provide jobs in districts overrode other concerns, which is what always happens with federal projects. And of course NASA is capped at what it is allowed to pay civil servants. But the CLPS program I think shows NASA might actually be learning from the lessons of SpaceX, namely that the best use of tax payer dollars is to create a competition among commercial providers with NASA as the main but not necessarily only customer. The big question becomes, in regards to this thread, if we have a SpaceX launch for a Moon Express manned lander and China buys the first trip, who got credit? 

It's both, plus Congress. Apollo was built with contractors as well, and with the same kind of constant, invasive oversight (ditto Shuttle). The bigger problem is Congress, but that gets into dicey territory on the forum.

NASA and commercial partners can absolutely do it, and will, it just won't likely include much from the SLS/Orion guys, IMO.

Literally all near future conterfactuals ride on how Starship performs. If it works, all bets are off, it's that transformative. Even minus Starship, things get interesting just from New Glenn, which is also pretty capable (assuming Blue starts making faster progress on, well, everything).

 

[todofwar]

1 minute ago, tater said:

It's both, plus Congress. Apollo was built with contractors as well, and with the same kind of constant, invasive oversight (ditto Shuttle). The bigger problem is Congress, but that gets into dicey territory on the forum.

NASA and commercial partners can absolutely do it, and will, it just won't likely include much from the SLS/Orion guys, IMO.

Literally all near future conterfactuals ride on how Starship performs. If it works, all bets are off, it's that transformative. Even minus Starship, things get interesting just from New Glenn, which is also pretty capable (assuming Blue starts making faster progress on, well, everything).

 

Congress is what I meant by the jobs in districts thing. Also, there is the other concern around the culture at NASA today. Plenty of Mars Sample Return people are probably getting nervous and trying to find ways to make sure they don't lose money to manned missions to the moon (I happen to think sample return is also pointless from a science perspective but that is going way off topic). And there is no way we put a human on the moon in the 2020s and get back a sample from Mars in 2030 unless we double NASA's budget, probably more. Still, I think NASA, with all its many faults, remains the best space agency out there and can get an astronaut to the moon. I have pretty low faith in Starship, but I also had low faith in the Falcon 9 and was convinced a VTHL was the way to go so I could be wrong. I do worry about landing Starship on the moon because the moon is all regolith, might not be able to handle something that heavy without a dedicated platform first. 

[lllmaxlvllll]

There's one obvious answer: the U.S. Space Force.

Spoiler

But in all seriousness I would guess a joint project between NASA and another private company.

 

[tater]

NASA is awesome. As far as I'm concerned, I'd give nearly the entire SLS/Orion budget to the deep space people to make landers/probes/rovers, and reserve a fraction to pay to companies like SpaceX/Blue for services after the fact (build the capability, then NASA buys it).

[Starstruck69]

Fair point. Is the competition not a good thing though? 

[sevenperforce]

13 hours ago, todofwar said:

Plenty of Mars Sample Return people are probably getting nervous and trying to find ways to make sure they don't lose money to manned missions to the moon (I happen to think sample return is also pointless from a science perspective but that is going way off topic). And there is no way we put a human on the moon in the 2020s and get back a sample from Mars in 2030 unless we double NASA's budget, probably more. 

You will find no bigger fan of manned missions than me, but sample return from Mars is absolutely science-worthy.

[tater]

5 hours ago, Starstruck69 said:

Fair point. Is the competition not a good thing though? 

Competition is wonderful.

That's why I think for raw capability (payload delivered to X, where X could be a transfer to Jupiter, or landed on the Moon or Mars), NASA should say they want a capability (say 4 astronauts and supplies delivered to the lunar surface), and that they will pay some amount once the capability exists. Guarantee that they'll buy 10 flights at however many hundred million a pop within a few years of the capability existing, where "existing" means demonstrated. So Blue or SpaceX or Boeing would have to land their vehicle with private crew and supplies to show it works, all on their own dime.

[tater]

LOL:

Apparently Musk agrees with me.

[Ol’ Musky Boi]

27 minutes ago, tater said:

LOL:

Apparently Musk agrees with me.

Looks like that'll be happening sooner than we thought. Wether or not NASA will be able to stick to it's 5 year deadline is uncertain, the amount of times we've seen presidents promise to send humans back to the moon "and beyond" only for NASA's budget to stay the same has made me highly skeptical. If the US wants to send people back to the moon it'll take more than a speech, they'll have to seriously up NASA's budget, especially if they want to get there within 5 years.

Although their deadline does lie within the Presidents possible second term, so it seems that the completion of the goal will be determined by the results of the next election. But let's just avoid talking about the politics of that.

[tater]

NASA's budget is not going to largely increase. The human spaceflight program is maxed out. SLS + Orion + ISS doesn't even leave anything for Gateway, much less a lander.

I don't like the idea of sacrificing ISS for Gateway as proposed for the simple reason that Gateway can only possibly be used for a couple weeks a year, though I'd happily deorbit ISS in 2024 in return for something that will also have crew aboard 100% of the time.

[FleshJeb]

Given that the timeline and budget is darn near impossible, I have to wonder if this isn't purposely setting NASA up for failure as an excuse to privatize spaceflight.

If you all think that particular speculation is too political, I'll edit it out.

[Guest]

not me

[mikegarrison]

Presidents (and Vice Presidents) can say all they want, but budgets come from Congress.