NASA picks Blue Origin’s partnership for building second manned lunar lander
An artist’s concept of Blue Moon
NASA today announced that it has chosen the partnership led by Blue Origin to build a second manned lunar lander for its Artemis program.
Blue Origin will design, develop, test, and verify its Blue Moon lander to meet NASA’s human landing system requirements for recurring astronaut expeditions to the lunar surface, including docking with Gateway, a space station where crew transfer in lunar orbit. In addition to design and development work, the contract includes one uncrewed demonstration mission to the lunar surface before a crewed demo on the Artemis V mission in 2029. The total award value of the firm-fixed price contract is $3.4 billion.
The other partners in the contract are Draper, Astrobotic, and Honeybee Robotics.
This is NASA’s second contract for a lunar lander, with SpaceX’s Starship the first. The idea is to have two landers available from competing companies for both competition and redundancy, similar to the approach the agency has used for its manned ferry service to ISS, using SpaceX and Boeing. I wonder if NASA’s experience on the Moon will be similar to that ferry service, whereby only SpaceX so far has been able to deliver. The track record of Blue Origin suggests it will do about as poorly as Boeing has with Starliner.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
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An artist’s concept of Blue Moon
NASA today announced that it has chosen the partnership led by Blue Origin to build a second manned lunar lander for its Artemis program.
Blue Origin will design, develop, test, and verify its Blue Moon lander to meet NASA’s human landing system requirements for recurring astronaut expeditions to the lunar surface, including docking with Gateway, a space station where crew transfer in lunar orbit. In addition to design and development work, the contract includes one uncrewed demonstration mission to the lunar surface before a crewed demo on the Artemis V mission in 2029. The total award value of the firm-fixed price contract is $3.4 billion.
The other partners in the contract are Draper, Astrobotic, and Honeybee Robotics.
This is NASA’s second contract for a lunar lander, with SpaceX’s Starship the first. The idea is to have two landers available from competing companies for both competition and redundancy, similar to the approach the agency has used for its manned ferry service to ISS, using SpaceX and Boeing. I wonder if NASA’s experience on the Moon will be similar to that ferry service, whereby only SpaceX so far has been able to deliver. The track record of Blue Origin suggests it will do about as poorly as Boeing has with Starliner.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Interesting approach to solving the “long ladder problem”, but the rendering doesn’t really show the engines that will deliver the thrust.
I wonder how much those four huge deflector shields weigh? And they don’t seem to completely shield the landing feet… of course neither do SpaceX’s, but those on the Starship are a LOT further away from the nozzles.
Okay, some things about this overall configuration don’t add up for me.
At first I imagined that the invisible engines at the top were roughly equivalent to the banks of thrusters around the upper part of the Lunar Starship hull. But that can’t be right because all those are for is to handle the “last-100-meters” problem, to avoid throwing up tons of lunar regolith and digging a pit on landing and takeoff.
For TLI, lunar orbit entry, landing de-orbit, lunar re-orbit, carriage of tons of payload, and possibly even return to Earth orbit, there are multiple Raptor vacuum engines down below, and of course a huge hull to hold the propellant they need. Where’s all that?
So evidently this design is closer to a capsule than a ship. This puts a new light on the part of the linked article that talks about how BO, Lockheed, Boeing, et al are going to “pay for the design and development”.
Somebody at NASA has heard this before and realized that the kind of development needed was the kind where a guy in a tuxedo holds out a top hat and waves a magic wand over it!
Important safety tip, NASA: stay friends with Elon.
I think Bezos has too much on his plate. I know this is a group effort, “National Team”, but which contractor gets what? I am sure the proposal is out there. A lot of this work goes to sub-contractors and sub-sub-contractors anyway.
Ray,
Here is a cutaway drawing of the Lunar Starship.
Thanks, Jay. If you have an observation or critique of my potentially harebrained comments, I would value hearing them!
Ray,
Not a problem. The questions you are asking are probably the same ones both companies engineers are asking right now. We are seeing only concept drawings and CGI videos. What we see now will be different than the final production article. This was true of Apollo’s LEM.
Good points you have. Will we see a Lunar Starship with hard landing fins like in the old 1950’s space movies and no landing legs? I did not see any re-entry tiles on the Lunar Starship drawings, so once it is up, it is not coming down. I know they have plans for Tanker Starships to fill it up, but I wonder if they have any special way to transfer cargo like modules?
My god, it’s huge!
Does it have a pool?
“I did not see any re-entry tiles on the Lunar Starship drawings, so once it is up, it is not coming down.”
Truly, it is a spaceship for good once it’s launched. It doesn’t need fins either, at least for the Moon. The performance potential of Starship, with all the things it can dispense with, and ever-more-powerful Raptors, is truly staggering. I would not be surprised if the Blue Moon never gets built, or it’ll be an ugly little sibling if it is!
By the same token, Superheavy will never really leave Earth – its only function is to get Starship out of Earth’s crushing gravity well and thick atmosphere, and let her go! Then land and do it again.
Mission to uncover the Black Monolith.
Jay – Looked through the internet but can’t find a similar picture with clearer labeling. Can you help us out?
Correct me if I am wrong, but this is the second competition/award that was mandated by congress, because people got upset that SpaceX won the first competition. Blue Origin was the prime driver/complainer.
So it surprises me not that they won.
Doubting Thomas,
Sorry about that. Looks like the one I snagged is someone’s poster they are selling. I can’t find a Lunar Starship, but here is a clearer cutaway of Starship. They both should be close in design.
Yo,
We should all be aware that SpaceX so far has done almost no work on designing the interior of Starship, for either its Moon or Mars missions. In fact, every graphic I have ever seen from either Musk or SpaceX about such missions has indicated a woeful ignorance about the needs of interplanetary travel, based on what has been learned on numerous space station missions during the past half century.
This doesn’t concern me, as SpaceX is always focused on first things first, getting the rocket to work. Once this challenge is mostly met I fully expect them to do the right due diligence in designing Starship’s interior.
That said, we must therefore take with a grain of salt all these graphics.
Jay – Thank you for the cool graphic.
Robert – Yes, you are right. I have an entire shaker of salt next to my computer.
But the graphics are cool and it is exciting to see conceptual pictures that are not just NASA’s Apollo 2.0 reboot. Big ships can provide big dreams.
Thanks again Jay and as always, thanks to you and your readers here Robert for interesting posts and discussions.
PS Saw Don McMillian in person about 6 years ago in Seattle. He is hilarious AND he has had a bit part on Star Trek and advertised for Little Caeser’s Pizza. Not bad for a a guy with an EE degree.
Draper has been building flight computers from custom chips with secure architecture. My info is from jobs advertised and patent filings and open source historic knowledge. So speculation but that and navigation systems are all in scope.
GeorgeC: Of all the partners in this team, Draper is the only one with long time experience in space. I think the contract was awarded because Bezos pulled weight, not because it was the best proposal.
Ray,
“I wonder how much those four huge deflector shields weigh?”
Apparently, those are radiators. (So, they probably do not weigh that much.)
On the side facing away in the render, there are two equally sized components which are solar arrays.
“For TLI, lunar orbit entry, landing de-orbit, lunar re-orbit, carriage of tons of payload, and possibly even return to Earth orbit, there are multiple Raptor vacuum engines down below, and of course a huge hull to hold the propellant they need. Where’s all that?”
As I understand it, the BE-7 engines are underneath the crew compartment, but are not visible in this render. Given how close they are to the ground, you do wonder how they are handling regolith plumes.
”I wonder how much those four huge deflector shields weigh?”
What huge deflector shields?
”At first I imagined that the invisible engines at the top were roughly equivalent to the banks of thrusters around the upper part of the Lunar Starship hull.”
The invisible engines at the top are the RCS thrusters. The main landing and take-off engines are at the bottom.
”Where’s all that?”
Once launched, the Blue Moon lander never comes back to Earth. It stays docked to the Gateway between missions. A propellant tanker will refuel it shortly before the launch of Orion, which will meet it at the Gateway. Once the 30-day surface stay is over, Blue Moon will launch from the moon in its entirety and carry the crew and cargo back to the Gateway. The Gateway, the lander, and the tanker are all re-usable.
”I know this is a group effort, “National Team”, but which contractor gets what?”
Blue is developing most of the lander. Lockheed is developing the tanker and transfer vehicles. Boeing is providing the docking mechanisms. Draper is providing the landing software and computer systems. Honeybee is proving much of the robotics. It hasn’t been stated yet, but I suspect that Astrobotic is providing the landers for the technology pathfinder missions in 2024 and 2025.
I’m impressed. This is a fantastic architecture. I’m glad they won. It gives me some hope for the Artemis program again.
Hi Bob,
We should all be aware that SpaceX so far has done almost no work on designing the interior of Starship, for either its Moon or Mars missions.
You are right to caution against putting any stock in any of these independent (i.e., space fan) generated renders of the Starship HLS interior, because SpaceX has said virtually nothing on record about it!
That said…I have heard that the Starship engineers at Hawthorne *have* done a fair bit of work on the interior, though exactly how finalized various aspects are is less certain. And we have seen photos, for example, of working prototypes of the elevator and its deployment mechanism, and full-scale mockups of the cargo level and airlocks, out at Hawthorne. (These have appeared in NASA powerpoint presentations on Artemis.) And just the other day, there were intriguing comments by Amit Kshatriya, deputy associate administrator for the Moon to Mars program in the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, who had spent a couple days out at Hawthorne looking over all things Starship. “I spent 12 hours with the team at Hawthorne and got to see what’s going on there. I mean, in terms of Raptor production and all their ECLSS [Environmental Control and Life Support System] and other development for Starship.”
But it makes sense that, while most of the engineering talent is devoted to getting the initial milestones of Starship completed (i.e., getting to orbit, on-orbit refueling), they would be working in parallel on internal design and systems. Most of that isn’t the kind of the thing you can throw together at the last minute; and SpaceX is on the clock for a 2026 landing (though I think few people seriously think that date will hold). I think some of that work is actually required to be done now as milestones under the HLS contract.
But SpaceX is under zero obligation to share any of that publicly before it wants to, so . . . all we can do is speculate.
mkent,
I’m impressed. This is a fantastic architecture.
It is a major, major improvement on their submission the last time around. And, the source selection statement makes it sound like they really did their homework on actual technical execution, in a way that Dynetics, alas, did not.
I am particularly impressed at the payload capacity, which is much more than I expected: 20 tons reusable, 30 tons expendable. You can do a lot of things with that, if you want to.
Ugh. I was a bit imprecise up above. As I understand it, Blue is building and launching the propellant tanker itself. Lockheed is providing transportation from LEO to NRHO using the re-usable cislunar transport vehicle it is working on. Said vehicle will spend its days going back and forth between LEO and NRHO, carrying propellant and cargo in whichever direction it needs to go. I suspect it will refuel itself in LEO from a Blue Origin tanker.
In the early days it will probably carry propellant to the moon and science samples to the Earth. But if lunar ice is real, propellant might start moving in the opposite direction once the lunar infrastructure gets built up sufficiently. This could be the start of not just an LEO propellant depot but the start of a whole cislunar economy.
And with Boeing and Lockheed Martin both on the National Team, they should have access to ULA’s Centaur and ACES technology to help make it happen. They could call it Cislunar 11. :) I wonder when George Sowers will next be on the Space Show.
Neat. The more I think about this, the better it gets.
There’s one other new development giving a little insight into the Starship HLS interior design work that just came to my attention: Nick Cummings of SpaceX gave some short remarks to the 2023 Humans to Mars Summit describing what the Starship HLS for the Artemis III mission will look look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=5013&v=XUUOrCRrZu0&feature=youtu.be
The gist seems to be that this will be a smaller, simplified habitable crew space than the full volume of Starship allows, because that is all that is necessary to meet NASA’s modest requirements for that mission (which is just to sustain 2 astronauts for 6 days on the Moon, and a few surface EVA’s), and doubtless too because it will make it easier to have it ready on a timely basis. There will be the cargo deck we have seen photos of, with two airlocks and a large space in the middle for a small rover or other equipment along with the elevator mechanism, and above that, a single crew deck for everything else (command and control, living quarters, etc.).
Subesequent Starship HLS’s, however, will have much more.
Dynetics disrespected yet AGAIN.
It was fully reusable and no longer needed drop tanks. Now we know why it looked angry…
Jay’s cut-away was early, though better than the greenhouse now expected:
SpaceX video of the full stack:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J9uYLy2CTsk&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fforum.nasaspaceflight.com%2F&source_ve_path=OTY3MTQ&feature=emb_imp_woyt
And here is the Moon Rocket that actually worked
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jl5yQ6RX_eE&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.secretprojects.co.uk%2F&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjY&feature=emb_logo
Jeff Wright,
You wrote: “And here is the Moon Rocket that actually worked”
That would be “A” Moon rocket that actually worked, not the rocket. Several rockets have sent payloads past, around, and onto the Moon. SLS is only one of them.
If you were comparing it to Starship, however, then please recognize that Starship is not a Moon rocket but a Mars rocket. SLS was not designed to send anything to Mars. It was designed to send mankind to an asteroid that would be captured and put into orbit around the Moon. Putting mankind back onto the Moon was an afterthought, put forth by a president after the SLS design was frozen. Constellation, was designed to put mankind back onto the Moon, but it was cancelled by the president who didn’t even want SLS.
Jeff, I am having difficulty finding Dynetics’ latest proposal. Do you have a link that shows the improvements and the bid?
Robert Zimmerman wrote: “That said, we must therefore take with a grain of salt all these graphics.”
Considering that the one sketch was dated 2018, that I didn’t find a date on the other, and that neither one had a SpaceX identifier, these are most likely, as Richard M said, fantasy designs by fans, not actual SpaceX ideas or proposals for interior designs.
Richard is also correct that some serious considerations need to be started already in order to be ready by the contractual due date. It is not just the lunar lander but also the trips (there are two, so far) around the Moon. Before circumnavigating the Moon, Starship will have to prove its life support capabilities in Earth orbit.
Robert is probably right that this is not the area taking up much of the engineering staff, but some work needs to be done now to make sure the manned versions of Starship are ready as they are needed. It is not clear exactly what are their timelines and schedules, but what is most important is to make sure that the long lead items or designs are addressed soon enough that the “long poles” don’t hold up the show. Priorities are important in this or any business. The Blue Origin team will also have to prioritize their lunar lander workforce. Since we have experience with the ISS, life support, various facilities, and work stations should not need significant design work, but Blue Origin and SpaceX need to direct their interior designs to fit the requirements and other desired features.
The first manned Starship flight will have on board Jared Isaacman and probably a small number of other people to test out the ship as a manned spacecraft. This interior design need not be the same as the lunar circumnavigation flights, which will not need the same interior configuration as the lunar lander version.
In addition, I expect that before any manned Mars mission, a version of manned Starship will spend months in low Earth orbit to test the longevity of the life support and other systems. This internal configuration need not be the same as a lunar lander or a Mars lander, but it should test out the various systems in ways similar to their use during a Martian voyage.
I have suggested in the past that Starship could also be used as a space station, and a version similar to this test ship may be suitable for this purpose.
Hi Edward,
SLS was not designed to send anything to Mars. It was designed to send mankind to an asteroid that would be captured and put into orbit around the Moon.
It’s kind of even worse: SLS wasn’t designed to go anywhere in particular.The Obama Administration promulgated the “Flexible Path” to supersede the Constellation program in summer 2010; the Senate retaliated by salvaging the parts of Constellation that they really cared about (the mega-rocket and the Orion capsule), but its actual employment was vaguely left to the Flexible Path: “We’ll build it, and then figure out what we’re going to do with it.” Eventually in the second Obama term this centered on variations of the Asteroid Retrieval Mission, but this proved to be about as popular on the Hill as kudzu or staying in session over Christmas. Trump put paid to that with a more popular objective – the Moon – but that meant NASA somehow had to come up with a lander. Which was never going to happen quickly.
P.S. I don’t believe Dynetics ever released any public version of its proposal, unfortunately. Alas, all we have are a couple renders, and whatever you can suss out from Angry Astronaut’s walk-through videos of Dynetics, which isn’t a lot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaMfdj1PgZA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p5NVNVqh1w
Jeff,
Dynetics disrespected yet AGAIN.
Hey, take it up with Jim Free. I didn’t write the Dynetics section of the Source Selection Statement!
That would be “A” Moon rocket that actually worked, not the rocket. Several rockets have sent payloads past, around, and onto the Moon. SLS is only one of them.
Falcon 9 actually sent TWO missions to the Moon last year! (Danuri and Hakuto-R.)
It will be launching two more in 2023!
Richard M,
“It’s kind of even worse: SLS wasn’t designed to go anywhere in particular.”
Yeah, you’re right. I seem to have given the Obama administration more credit for brains than it deserves. Even the astroid scientists were not enamored with the Asteroid Retrieval Mission idea. They seemed to think that it cost too much and didn’t do anything that they couldn’t do robotically with real asteroids rather than with some sample arbitrarily chosen solely on the basis that it was barely movable. Who knows? Maybe the scientists are too picky about the samples they get for a $100 billion expenditure.
I’m gonna be curious as to what the abort options will be during landing on the moon if the primary engines (or something else) experiences a problem/failure.
I can see Starship having some capture element at the top to ‘abort to orbit’ but how do the BO crew get out?