totm dec 2023 Artemis Discussion Thread

[tater]

https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/esdmd/artemis-campaign-development-division/human-landing-system-program/work-underway-on-large-cargo-landers-for-nasas-artemis-moon-missions/

has the door=crane idea I think I posted a sketch of that in one of the threads a few years ago.

Yep:

Spoiler

 

 

HLS shows more—and smaller—landing engines I see.

Edited April 21 by tater

[darthgently]

54 minutes ago, tater said:

https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/esdmd/artemis-campaign-development-division/human-landing-system-program/work-underway-on-large-cargo-landers-for-nasas-artemis-moon-missions/

has the door=crane idea I think I posted a sketch of that in one of the threads a few years ago.

Yep:

  Hide contents

 

 

HLS shows more—and smaller—landing engines I see.

What if lunar starship landed horizontally? 

[SunlitZelkova]

6 hours ago, darthgently said:

What if lunar starship landed horizontally? 

It would loosely resemble this.

Spoiler

I have no idea if it would be feasible to modify Starship to do that or not. Worst case scenario you could build a lander that looks like this and stick it on top, and use Starship as a space tug instead.

[tater]

10 hours ago, darthgently said:

What if lunar starship landed horizontally? 

Assuming the landing engines stay a thing, it hardly matters which way they land it, honestly. Like the XEUS concept (ACES Centaur with separate landing engines for horizontal landing), it could certainly work. Doesn't move the ball down the field for SpaceX's own goals, however. That said, bespoke Starships have already been suggested for other use cases, so a particularly involved customer could certainly ask for such a thing.

[darthgently]

7 hours ago, tater said:

Assuming the landing engines stay a thing, it hardly matters which way they land it, honestly. Like the XEUS concept (ACES Centaur with separate landing engines for horizontal landing), it could certainly work. Doesn't move the ball down the field for SpaceX's own goals, however. That said, bespoke Starships have already been suggested for other use cases, so a particularly involved customer could certainly ask for such a thing.

Yeah, that is the line of thought I went down basically.  For a lunar base, where the craft stays on the surface, horizontal makes a lot more sense.  For cargo, personnel, stability.   I imagine if those crane cables get swinging for whatever reason, it could get interesting with a heavy load and mostly empty tanks.   Horizontal removes need for crane, big engines can be removed and RMA'd (ha), tanks converted to useful space etc.

Given the huge lack of urban crowding on the Moon vertical architecture seems very premature if not required. Just saying

[farmerben]

It's possible that NASA is corrupt, that Elon doesn't keep his promises, and the Starship-Artemis approach is fundamentally flawed.

[Ultimate Steve]

19 minutes ago, farmerben said:

It's possible that NASA is corrupt, that Elon doesn't keep his promises, and the Starship-Artemis approach is fundamentally flawed.

I haven't watched the video, but I wouldn't put too much stock in anything Thunderf00t says. It's possible he's changed since I stopped paying attention to him, but at least back in the day, he wasn't at all a credible source and let his opinions dominate the discussion rather than facts.

[tater]

32 minutes ago, farmerben said:

It's possible that NASA is corrupt, that Elon doesn't keep his promises, and the Starship-Artemis approach is fundamentally flawed.

Not sure why I'd care about anyone's opinion who's not paying for Artemis. I'll happily commit to not critiquing whatever space program he pays for with his own tax dollars monetary units.

Artemis is a stupid program, to be honest. It was making lemonade out of the lemons at hand (Orion + SLS), nothing more.

I did not watch more than a few seconds, but what difference does Elon's promises make, anyway? It's not SLS, SpaceX only gets paid for achieving milestones. Should the "promises" not get kept... they make no money. Same applies to Blue Origin.

[cubinator]

10 hours ago, darthgently said:

I imagine if those crane cables get swinging for whatever reason, it could get interesting with a heavy load and mostly empty tanks. 

Luckily it's not too hard to handle the wind force. 

[GuessingEveryDay]

1 hour ago, farmerben said:

It's possible that NASA is corrupt, that Elon doesn't keep his promises, and the Starship-Artemis approach is fundamentally flawed.

Ah my blood is still on fire from making this comment on that video:

Okay, and what about the other guys? New Glenn was announced in 2013, Vulcan was announced in 2015 and Starship in 2016. Who has the most flights, hmm? Starship's first full flight (Starship and Superheavy booster) was a year ago on April 20th, 2023 and had 2 more since (written before IFT-4). Vulcan had a full flight on January 8, 2024 and New Glenn is still sitting on the LC-36. Don't get me wrong, SpaceX does stretch a lot of numbers, but at least they're doing something instead of diddling around with money like Blue Origin and ULA. The closest launch organization to SpaceX is China, FREKIN' CHINA.
For the Human Landing System, National Team and Dynetics offered systems that carried less than 20 tons and more than double NASA's budget for a lander! SpaceX was the only one that fit NASA's budget of $3 billion dollars while also offering the most payload, at least 50 tons. Blue Origin cried and sued NASA, making Congress add 7 billion, just so they can afford 2 landers. Again, I'm fine with spanking SpaceX. However, when they're the only ones that are actually doing good, it's stupid.
Here's a video that covers the 3 systems that NASA was considering:

 

[darthgently]

29 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Luckily it's not too hard to handle the wind force. 

Ha ha.  Wind wasn't really a consideration.  I'm thinking a winch on one side jamming, or a cable snapping, or the remaining fuel sloshing in resonance to whatever motion, or the surface the whole apparatus resides on deforming suddenly and unevenly, or even the Kraken!  They should definitely avoid time warp for that last one

[cubinator]

4 hours ago, darthgently said:

Ha ha.  Wind wasn't really a consideration.  I'm thinking a winch on one side jamming, or a cable snapping, or the remaining fuel sloshing in resonance to whatever motion, or the surface the whole apparatus resides on deforming suddenly and unevenly, or even the Kraken!  They should definitely avoid time warp for that last one

I know  Lots that can happen with a mechanism like that, and I'm also a big fan of not giving things a lot of extra potential energy when it's not needed.

[tater]

To scale.

[GuessingEveryDay]

16 minutes ago, tater said:

To scale.

Okay, Starship has already decided to be at 50m tall (minus booster), so the new National Team (NT) cargo lander seems to be 35 m when they have that payload carrying thing on top. So you have the option of sending 3 rovers on one Starship or 1 rover with NT... Sheesh, why can't the other teams do better? Also is this under a new competition or is it still the HLS with SpaceX getting $2.9 billion and NT gets $5.9?

[SunlitZelkova]

1 hour ago, GuessingEveryDay said:

Sheesh, why can't the other teams do better?

There’s not a lot of ways to do that without straight up copying Starship.

Orbital assembly of a larger lander would be time consuming and wasteful when compared with the monolithic Starship.

[tater]

There's a lot to be said for a smaller lander, actually. In the dystopian world of 1-stack missions to the Moon, or 1-stack PLUS architectures (anything looking like SLS at this point), bigger is better—because at least something about the mission shouldn't suck (and we're stuck with SLS/Orion for a bit).

Moving past SLS/Orion, if I was in charge of Artemis sans SLS, I'd push my contractors for a tug/ferry architecture with lots of refilling in LEO.

Starship in various forms: HLS cause that's already contracted, but a orbital depot version (also sorta on the table already), and a tug/tanker variant. The new versions I would suggest? A 1-way version(s) as pre-placed habitat designed for long duration on the surface. A smaller version—meaning: shorter—where you have a lander that only holds props for a RT from lunar orbit to the surface and back (with large margin). This is effectively a third stage on SS version 3 where the total vehicle height is the same (ie: SS divided into 2 stages).

A short lander based on SS—just the payload section, plus a few rings below—would house 1 Rvac, and the landing engines, plus the crew section (HLS-like). Such a lander masses maybe 30-35 tons (dry of props, but with crew consumables, etc). With just a couple small tanks (a couple rings) for ~100-200t of props, the thing can RT to lunar orbit easily (in fact 1.5 round trips).

Same with the smaller BO lander. With pre-placed habs, no need for a giant lander. Land, move to your Moon house, work from there, go back to lander to go home.

[darthgently]

On 4/22/2024 at 4:47 PM, Ultimate Steve said:

I haven't watched the video, but I wouldn't put too much stock in anything Thunderf00t says. It's possible he's changed since I stopped paying attention to him, but at least back in the day, he wasn't at all a credible source and let his opinions dominate the discussion rather than facts.

Thunderf00t definitely has a corner on the smug market.  And I think he probably considers his gap filling guesses as logically implied facts moreso than most

One of the characteristics I appreciate about Musk is that in an interview with millions watching, an interviewer will ask him a question that everyone wants an answer to and he's expected to bravely put forth something confident and comforting and he'll just shrug wistfully and say "I don't know, we'll find out"

Edited April 24 by darthgently
Clarifying subject of first sentence

[AckSed]

32 minutes ago, darthgently said:

He definitely has a corner on the smug market.  And I think he probably considers his gap filling guesses as logically implied facts moreso than most

One of the characteristics I appreciate about Musk is that in an interview with millions watching, an interviewer will ask him a question that everyone wants an answer to and he's expected to bravely put forth something confident and comforting and he'll just shrug wistfully and say "I don't know, we'll find out"

He had the same apologetic, "please bear with me as I run into more delays" energy about him when explaining Starship V1's current payload, as he did way back when he was explaining to the investors of Tesla why they didn't have their (original) Roadster yet.

Edited April 23 by AckSed

[tater]

https://lsic.jhuapl.edu/uploadedDocs/meetings/docs/2441-DISTRO A LunA-10 LSIC Performer Binder.pdf

Lunar base stuff in PDF form with the plans from many of the players.

[PakledHostage]

Coming May 15th, for the Lego/Artemis lovers here:

 

Edited April 26 by PakledHostage
Fixed link

[StrandedonEarth]

41 minutes ago, PakledHostage said:

Coming May 15th, for the Lego/Artemis lovers here:

 

Well, the scope and scale is certainly impressive, and I imagine it costs about as much too…

Lego should put out cheap sooty Falcon 9 kits with all pieces except payload having been previously used …

Edited April 26 by StrandedonEarth

[darthgently]

5 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Well, the scope and scale is certainly impressive, and I imagine it costs about as much too…

Lego should put out cheap sooty Falcon 9 kits with all pieces except payload having been previously used …

I could imagine Adam Savage (ala Mythbusters, former prop designer) doing a video on adding soot to a LEGO F9.  You should suggest it to him.  Mostly serious here

[tater]

 

[AckSed]

I'm going to say something contentious.

Now that manned flights are growing closer, we have to address a fact that isn't being spoken: space travel is dangerous. The Artemis program, or something connected to it, may have the first death in space in over a decade. Maybe not in the first launch, not in the second, hopefully never. But for all the talk about commercialisation, this is space exploration and it is not safe.

This isn't pronouncing doom. As Chris Hadfield says in his TED talk on fear versus danger, NASA has considered risk, reduced it where possible. He also said that the Space Shuttle was a complex flying machine and the chances of a catastrophic event was, when he flew, 1 in 38. He still went.

SLS and Orion is less complex, we have far better robotics than Apollo ever did, and an honest-to-Oberth partially-reusable 'space truck' in Falcon 9.

However... we cannot fully design out the chance of death, nor pretend that we are not putting people in harm's way. SpaceX makes it look easy. SpaceX also has "Stay Paranoid" emblazoned on the desks of Mission Control. Even the Apollo 9-like mission proposed in tandem with SpaceX could result in deaths.

What brought this on? A blog post by Wayne Hale on the laser-focus on monetary cost as the be-all, end-all of space exploration: https://waynehale.wordpress.com/2019/06/19/blood-and-money/

Quote

We must have a clear-eyed appreciation for the risk involved in space exploration.  Flying to the moon will not be much safer in 2024 than it was in 1969.  Exploration always comes with risk, and with some regularity exploration risk is realized.

The real cost of Artemis will be written in blood.  Face that fact.

This may be considered a poor time to bring this up – at a time when so many folks are actively working toward program approval.  Death is hardly a selling point.  But if we don’t recognize that fact, the program will come apart at the first bad day.

I for one think this an acceptable cost – if we are so unfortunate to incur it.  But the nation needs to make the commitment to put people in harms way.  This is only acceptable because of the benefits that will follow.  If we stop at the first accident because the public did not realize it might happen it would be better not to start at all.

If in the future something does go wrong, I have a polite request for the few people reading this: don't go mad. Do not argue yourself into the hole that all exploration should be done robotically. That you knew this would happen and humans should never have left the ground, never mind Earth.

Do not let your fear control you. If you see someone else who likes space falling into the same trap, I request - because I can't make you do a damn thing - that you pull them out.

Wayne Hale thinks the risk is worth the reward, that it is brave to take on this risk, and so do I.

[Exoscientist]

The major problem with NASA implementing Artemis to land on the Moon can be summed up in one sentence: they are still thinking of Artemis as like the Constellation program being “Apollo on steroids”. No, Constellation was much larger with a much larger launcher in the Ares V with plus an additional, separate launcher in the Ares I to get Orion to orbit. No, the correct way of thinking of Artemis is as comparable to Apollo in the sense of the size of its payload capacity and the fact the SLS also has to be used to get the Orion capsule to orbit. And actually on cost grounds you can consider it “better” than Apollo since it is CHEAPER than Apollo since in inflation adjusted dollars it’s about a quarter the program cost.

So, the problem is that in still thinking in “Apollo on Steroid” terms, the idea is retained the lander has to be these humongous landers like the Starship HLS or even the over-large Blue Origin lander.  No, just think of the lander as being Apollo size, at ca. 13 ton gross mass of the Apollo LEM.
Then the lander doesn’t have to be some $10 to $20 billion development cost. It can be done for just a few hundred million dollars because the needed propulsive stage(s) and crew capsule already exist. You just have to ask our European partners for those components that already exist and are in operational status.

But the desire is to get Artemis to serve as the launcher for a continually occupied Moon base, a la how the ISS is for LEO. This is actually another sense of how Artemis, or more accurately the current space program in general, is “better” than Apollo. Back in the Apollo era NASA had to develop all the various launchers and stages and spacecraft from scratch, at great expense. But now, don’t think of the SLS or any of the over-large proposed landers to carry cargo to the Moon. Think of any of the several commercial orbital launchers for the purpose. The surprising conclusion you draw is that instead of using the $2 billion per launch SLS for cargo delivery at, at best, a once per year cadence, you can launch cargo to the Moon for costs at about the same as what we spend now to send cargo to the ISS, in the $100 million per launch range and on a weekly basis, by using commercial launchers and small, already existing stages as the landers.
 See:

Possibilities for a single launch architecture of the Artemis missions.
https://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2022/10/possibilities-for-single-launch.html
 

  Bob Clark