Well, Starship 7 was not under control, so we have to wonder whether that is the shielded side or the upper side. If it is the shielded side, then is the angle of attack the right one, or is that the worst-case scenario? Are some of those hot spots the locations in which tiles have been removed to test alternate methods or to test what happens should a tile fall off? If it is that good during uncontrolled reentry, then maybe Starship’s TPS is sooo much better!

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/investigations/3282099/trump-nasa-pick-gop-scrutiny-donations-democrats-dei/

I agree with the Angry Astronaut
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zq7dn-_1JA

—and Mike Griffin
https://republicans-science.house.gov/_cache/files/2/d/2dc97bb6-040b-4d15-ae69-6b8de637174d/448A0B95841995613C9A9B19135C104C.2024-01-17-griffin—testimony.pdf

Keep in mind that these values assume Hohmann transfer orbits, which Hohmann assumed was the most propellant-efficient, but the reality is that often better transfer orbits can be found by vigilant and creative orbital mechanics (people who use the mechanics of orbits, my term, and I don’t know what such mechanics actually call themselves (probably “engineers”)), but these numbers are good for approximations and “back of the envelope” discussions, like ours.

An example is that the transfer orbits we use to Mars, these days, is often called a Hohmann transfer orbit, but it is actually different, and the trip to Mars takes closer to six months rather than the 8½ months of the true Hohmann transfer orbit. Lucy is about to use a gravity assist with the Earth, as another example, allowing Lucy to get out to Jupiter-orbit distances without using quite as much delta-v (propellant) as we would derive by using the chart.

I see Garver was picked as a rep for a company that wants to make Ballutes….she doesn’t play well with others–how could she not be a detriment since she loathes Trump as well as SLS?

Bloomy is an enemy of human spaceflight in general. It is frightening what his influence is.

Now your math makes sense.

No wonder the company is working so hard to increase the capacity of their tankers.

“I thought about the idea of aerobraking to LEO by the returning Lunar Starship but couldn’t figure the numbers. I used a precomputed Delta V ladder (ES to LEO to LO to LS) for my work..”

I use this one for my approximations:
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2FU5iH7huE5qKth7ZFvipXt8vzaFOO99qHFh9o9_SkLLk.png%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dd145ac9ae496abe35fae86fc11a584d62fe42592&rdt=51889

It is based upon certain assumptions, but an orbital mechanics program can probably improve realistic routes.

The real problem that we face is that nothing we have now was designed to return to the Moon, despite having been given that assignment in 2004. The interruption by Obama hurt us badly, setting NASA adrift for a decade. Amazingly, even after Trump put us back on track while we had a head start on much of the hardware we need, we still cannot seem to get back in a dozen years, even though NASA started from scratch in 1961 and succeeded eight and a quarter years later.

What a difference half a century makes.

I assumed based on Musk tweets and NASA remarks that 10 tankers would be required to fully refuel a Starship. That implies:

* Lunar Starship needs 10 tanker launches to LEO to get ready to go to moon or 1 Ship + 10 tanker launches

* Each of 4 Lunar tanker Starships take 10 tankers in LEO to get to moon or 40 tanker launches.

1 Lunar Starship launch + 10 tanker launches + 4 tanker launches to LEO + 40 tanker launches to 4 tankers = 55 launches. Fewer than 55 launches if the 10 tanker assumption is too conservative.

I thought about the idea of aerobraking to LEO by the returning Lunar Starship but couldn’t figure the numbers. I used a precomputed Delta V ladder (ES to LEO to LO to LS) for my work.

For my 20 ton mission, I returned to Lunar Orbit from the Lunar surface with enough fuel to burn for 517 meters per second out of a needed 4,100 meters / second to get back to LEO. So in this no lunar tanking sub scenario, the Starship would hit Earths atmosphere at 3,583 meters per second. Could the Ship aerobrake to LEO burning away the 3,583 m/sec without burning up? Don’t know. Can you help with a rough calculation?

Frankly, the concept of aerobraking seems like it could solve the Orion heatshield problem, aerobrake to LEO and catch another ride back home (say with the trusty Crew Dragon). Again flexibility and out of the box ideas need to be used to get us out of this Artemis fix rather than just demanding more money and more time over and over again.

The concept of releasing a lander from Starship is a great idea. A variant would be for two Starships, 1 to carry a crew and another to carry the lander. I just worry that Blue Origin won’t have a lander ready in time to meet even a 2030 target.

I think you caught the spirit of my posts, in order to finally get to the moon by or before 2030, the Nation will have to think outside the box and function as if getting to the moon is more important than just spreading money around.

Thanks

Plans for lunar exploration and population depend heavily upon the actual existence of water ice at the poles. With it, much propellant can be made on the Moon and retanking (refueling) can occur there inexpensively. Without it, retanking becomes complicated.
_________________
Gary asked: “Why pursue technology which will not support more than a ‘look at us, we did it’ program” and recommended that we pursue technologies that expand our presence in space.

This is exactly what NASA planned to do in the 1970s, but it turned out that all Congress wanted at the beginning of that decade was the former, the “look at us, we did it” program.
__________________
Jeff Wright wrote: “Orion’s expense baffles me.”

Orion is expensive because it took so long to make the launch vehicle.

At the beginning of a space project, there are some design engineers, a bunch of managers, quite a few bean counters, and a lot of administrators. Later, there are machinists and technicians thrown in, but they also come with their departments’ overhead. Assembly, integration, and test (AI&T) engineers and technicians get involved with their overhead, and the design team is reduced, but somehow the design overhead still seems large.

Once the project is operational, all those teams no longer have jobs, so the costs are reduced.

Just kidding! Orion is a throw away capsule, so a small design team continues, making incremental improvements. Machinists make the parts for the next capsule, and AI&T assembles and tests that next capsule.

Orion’s launch was delayed from 2015 to 2022, giving an opportunity to save money by reducing the engineering and technical team. However, management, administration, and oversight continues without much reduction in cost, and the facilities costs aren’t reduced at all; many costs continue as a monthly expense. Test facilities, such as thermal vacuum chambers, are likely a one-time cost, not like the continuous expense of the manufacturing facilities, which become more like storage facilities with a little work going on. When making it takes twice as long but at almost the same cost per year, the total cost is twice the budget.
___________________
Doubting Thomas wrote: “Either way the system (heatshield) gets the same total amount of heat (BTU, Megajoule, whatever) put into it, as long as it survives.”

This is not necessarily so. Most of the energy goes into heating the air as it compresses in front of the heat shield, and that hot air flows away around the reentry body, taking the heat energy with it. The kinetic energy of orbital speed is largely dissipated as thermal energy into the atmosphere rather than into the heat shield. When the spacecraft enters at a higher altitude, where the air is thinner, there is less heating of the heat shield (it takes longer to slow down). This is what the Space Shuttle and Starship rely upon, so they do not need the ablative heat shield to handle the higher temperature that a deeper trajectory would cause.

Ablation vs reusable reentry heat shield graph:
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Earth-Re-entry-paths-as-Velocity-altitude-graphs-showing-the-influence-of-the_fig4_261316575

This is the paper Figure 5 comes from:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261316575_Radiation-Ablation_Coupling_for_Capsule_Reentry_Heating_via_Simulation_and_Expansion_Tube_Investigations

The higher reentry altitude makes it easier to reuse the spacecraft, however Dragon and Starliner are designed for the ability to replace their ablative heat shields to facilitate reusability.

“Such a 20 ton mission has enough Delta V to get from LEO to LO to LS to LO BUT NOT ENOUGH Delta V remains to return to LEO never mind landing on Earth.”

First: the Starship lunar lander does not land on Earth, so it does not need the heavy equipment that allows this (heat shield, steering fins), so the lunar Starship is already lighter than the terran Starship. Second: SpaceX is still developing Starship, so it may end up with more delta-v capability than it has now. Third: SpaceX is already talking about Starship being able to lift closer to 200 tonnes to LEO, which would allow fewer propellant launches (half?) from the Earth in order to get to the Moon or to Mars. These can have an affect on the analysis of Starship’s usefulness.

Once on the lunar surface, a spacecraft needs around 1¾ km/sec of delta-v to get to low lunar orbit, then about ⅞ km/sec to leave that orbit and head back to Earth (it also takes virtually the same amount to land on the Moon from the lunar transfer orbit). It could use high altitude aerobraking at Earth to return to LEO. Can SpaceX give their lunar Starship the ability for a delta-v of 8 km/sec, or do they have to perform one or two retanking operations in lunar orbit (LO)?

I wouldn’t scoff at a 20 ton payload to the Moon. That is a nice capacity for a rocket to LEO. Getting that much to the lunar surface would be impressive.

Starship may not be the most efficient way to get to and from the Moon, so it may not be a long-term solution. The future should see many improvements in efficiency and effectiveness.

We cannot yet say exactly how Starship fits into our return to the Moon, because we don’t yet know what its final capabilities will be. It is still in development, and new versions have yet to be tested and analyzed. If it can put 20 tons or so of cargo onto the surface, then it may be more suitable for cargo runs and Blue Origin’s lunar lander may be more suitable for manned landings.

Doubting Thomas,
You wrote: “Finally, I looked at sending tankers to LO to refuel the crewed mission stuck in LO to return to LEO. I don’t need to fully refuel crew ship since I just want to get back to LEO to catch my Crew Dragon ride home. 4 Lunar Tankers carrying 100,000 kg of propellant each would do it. … 1 Lunar Ship – 5 Tanker Ships – 5 Super Heavy Boosters – 55 total Starship launches to get one crew on one Starship to the moon and back to LEO for pick up by Crew Dragon (Elon throws that ride home in for free).”

This is almost certainly how Starship would have to do it if it did it on its own. It is a combination of NASA’s original “Earth Orbit Rendezvous” idea to refuel the lunar spacecraft after launch and in Earth orbit, and the idea to only land a small portion of what was sent to the Moon, called “Lunar Orbit Rendezvous.”

I didn’t follow your math, however. I didn’t do my own research, but working from your comment above, if each Starship going to the Moon needs 5 tankers launched from Earth for LEO retanking, and four are needed at LO for retanking to return the lander to Earth, that sounds like twenty-four launches (4 LO tankers + 20 LEO tankers to get the four to LO). Adding the six launches for the lander and its five LEO tankers, and I get thirty launches, not fifty-five. SpaceX’s proposed orbital gas station may make this a little more efficient, and if Starship can carry more than 100 tons of propellants to LEO, then even fewer launches will be needed. (200 tons means 2 LO tankers and only 5 LEO tankers for them plus 1 lander and 3 LEO tankers for it for a total of 11 launches.)

What if Starship carried a cargo module to LEO and released it to its own voyage to land on the Moon? This way, the structural mass of Starship would not have to be taken to the Moon or landed, saving huge amounts of fuel. If the module is useful as living space, it may not even have to leave the Moon for another cargo run, allowing it even more cargo capacity.
____________________
Robert wrote: “What had happened is that NASA had already decided to replace the first heat shield design, because it was too costly and slow to install.”

At the amount they already have spent, and at the speed they already aren’t building them, shouldn’t slow-and-costly be the least of their concerns? How much did it cost to do this recent investigation into the failed material, and how long did it take? And now the failed material is the reason for the current delay in the next launch, in which NASA is again going to use Solid Rocket Boosters beyond their recommended one-year “use-before” date.

By the way, Robert, I just received another notice that I am posting too quickly and should slow down. Just thought you should know.

But NASA can’t run the Apollo playbook again. It worked in 1961-69 because a lot of things came together perfectly for it to work, things that don’t prevail today. Nor should it have to, because unlike 1961, there’s a whole lot of commercial capabilities that exist or are in advanced development which can be used to do the things NASA is trying to have SLS and Orion do.

The more companies and differing systems we cobble together the longer the integration time and then we are back to what is happening to Artemis anyway: “flying under known risk”.

JFK set a 9 year race to the moon. We are 2 years past what Charles Bolden set in 2010 as a reasonable target date for return to the moon. We are (effectively) 9 months from his 2017 reset goal and now we are 16 months from the new reset reset goal. We are now (effectively) 5 years from 2030.

I urge people to find a copy of “Angle of Attack – Harrison Storms and the Race to the Moon” by Mike Gray. Storms was the Program Manager of North American Aviation which designed the Apollo CSM. Storms took the fall for the Apollo fire. I suggest you read Chapter 11 on how NAA established initial design from NASA desired concept. One part of the effort was setting the reliability of Apollo: “Though it had been plucked from the air in a 10 minute discussion in Gilruth’s office, it was the product of vast experience…if they had dropped one decimal place the cost of the program would have been cut in half…added a decimal place and there…would not be enough money on the planet to finish the job”

While it is impossible for the government to say these words, there WILL be significant risk to humans in returning to the moon. With SpaceX hardware architectures, the cost may be low enough to have consortiums undertake the risk which the USG dares not speak of.

I watched Apollo 11 land on the moon as a teenager, I want to see us get back to the moon and I doubt I have until 2030 or later to wait. Pardon my impatience.

Richard M: Thank you for the Isaacman tweets. Most helpful. Based on where I think I am going on this subject, Isaacman is going to find my recommendations very tempting, should he actually read them.

And I promise you, my recommendations are NOT what you expect. :)

There are also some thoughtful follow-ups by Jared to replies he receives in the X thread, and those are worth reading, too.

I did not know @MikeBloomberg was so close to the space industry and government contracting. These points are not new, and I agree with most of them, but it’s great to have someone like Mike, with a loud voice, educating people on topics they may not be as familiar with.

The government in general, not just NASA, has a problem getting the best product at the lowest price due to excessive consolidation among defense and aerospace players. Disclosure: I know I sound like a broken record on this topic, but my opinion is based on over a decade of experience as a founder and CEO of a defense aerospace company [Draken International], witnessing firsthand how the big primes operate and seeing how it threatens the competitiveness of our nation.

The bottom line is, these companies have faced little competition for decades– and without that competitive pressure, they have become so bloated that they can’t take on a fixed-price project without hemorrhaging cash. Meanwhile, cost-plus contracts are designed to drag on for years at great expense to taxpayers.

The government has been conditioned to think this is the only way, though I give NASA a lot of credit for having the foresight to create the Commercial Resupply and Commercial Crew programs. The points raised in the article and Artemis aside, NASA does seem to truly recognize the value of fixed-price contracts and getting the best service for the lowest price.

You know, this often turns into a SpaceX vs. everyone or Elon fans vs. everyone debate, but it is really not exclusive to the space industry. This issue is rampant across the entire defense sector. In many cases, it is not about how good SpaceX is, but how bad the legacy players have become. There is a lot to be hopeful about as the big defense primes are overtaken by companies like SpaceX, Rocket Lab, Anduril and I am sure Blue Origin will soon make the right contributions as well. I know I am leaving out a bunch of up-and-comers, and that’s not meant to be a slight on any of them.

The world needs more companies like these and fewer from the past if we want our children to witness NASA astronauts and other astronauts accomplishing great things on the Moon, Mars and beyond. That is where I disagree with Mike, and I am obviously biased here, but I do believe we need a human presence out there—exploring, learning and building that exciting future where humans live among the stars. It just should not bankrupt the nation or hinder our ability to solve other problems here on Earth.

Fortunately, good companies have the solution, with a recent world-changing proof point, to inspire hope that we can achieve great things in space while tackling the important challenges back here on Earth.

https://x.com/rookisaacman/status/1847346039038291983

I am very skeptical of Starships ability to land on the moon…. At least any time soon. It is one thing to be able to land on a smooth surface, it is a whole different game to be able to land on a rocky, airless wilderness. ( How are those fins gonna work in a vacuum?)

Well, the HLS version of Starship is going to be heavy modified, based on everything we have seen. There won’t be any fins. Instead, there will be deployable landing legs. The outer surface will be coated, presumably for thermal regulation. There will be hot gas thrusters high on the fuselage for use near the surface on liftoff and landing to minimize regolith plumes. (And there are loads of other mission-specific differences, including, yes, the cargo bay and elevator.) The landing profile will be completely different than on Earth, because there is no atmosphere to deal with, and only one sixth the gravity.

But yes, they will have to have a very flat, well characterized landing site for the initial missions….until they can create a solid landing pad. The center of gravity on Starship is low, but these are still human lives at stake.

Walking around the place you actually see where my tax krona actually go…. Clean, safe and a pleasure to experience.

If you choose to make another visit, try and take a few days in the far north…. The landscape is stunning, the people are even more friendly, and you get the real “Svensk” experience…. ( If you are prone to mosquito bites tho, then avoid midsummer… Take a winter trip!)

I am very skeptical of Starships ability to land on the moon…. At least any time soon. It is one thing to be able to land on a smooth surface, it is a whole different game to be able to land on a rocky, airless wilderness. ( How are those fins gonna work in a vacuum?)

Apollo 11 only just made it … ( Good work Niel and your steel ‘nads! ) And the Apollo landers were made of tissue paper and balsa wood… I just can’t see a several ton ship landing safely on the lunar surface, then being able to return to orbit.

It will be interesting to see China’s approach, but my guess it will be “less is more”, and unfortunately my guess is they will have footprints on the moon way before any western nation.

I genuinely hope I am wrong…. And SpaceX has a history of doing amazing things, but just contemplating the logistics, and the physics… I am skeptical.

The True and Visible Mission of DOGE – What to Expect
December 6, 2024 | Sundance
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2024/12/06/the-true-and-visible-mission-of-doge-what-to-expect/

My summary of Sundance’s article:
• The last Federal Budget that passed through Congress was 2008
• Since 2008 all federal spending has been ‘short-term’ or ‘stop-gap’ spending measures known as “Continuing Resolutions”
• “Continuing Resolutions” (CR) for the next year include everything in the previous year’s CR and adds new pork
• President Trump will submit a new budget to Congress on February 1, 2025
• The Republicans in Congress don’t have the courage or political capital to cut out 17 years of fat from the spending process
• Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy and DOGE will expose the fat and take responsibility for it being cut

Good to see some of the Lori Garver worshipers take a hit:

Eh, none of this is a surprise to me. It’s part of the complicated picture of who Lori Garver is. Programmatically, she was and is profoundly in the right about what has been wrong with NASA, and we are the beneficiaries of her fight (against heavy odds) to move it in a better direction during her time at the agency. She also has apparently earned a reputation as someone who does not play well with others, who bears long grudges, and who is difficult to work for. Her memoir gives you insights into both of these insights into who she is and what she did.

She has, of course, zero chance of being offered a job by the Trump Administration at NASA, and she knows it. But that was true under the Biden Administration as well, albeit for a different set of reasons.

Lots of people try to turn this topic in to a SpaceX/Elon vs. NASA debate. It is really just understanding the reality that the government is lousy at capital allocation & big prime contractors are incentivized to be economically inefficient and abusive. This is not specific to NASA, but priorities and budgets will change as the world changes. A program, like SLS, that was outrageously expensive but tolerable because, ‘hey everyone wins’, quickly becomes underfunded or cancelled during different times with a different administration. The result, our children don’t get to see many Moon landings and the dream of an enduring lunar presence fades away for many more decades.

https://x.com/rookisaacman/status/1713213698557333976

Starship’s TPS is as shaky as Orion’s…. let’s be honest.

And when it comes to intellectual honesty—let me show you what that looks like by throwing my own state under the bus for a moment:

The scuttlebutt is that the price of SLS’ death is for Space Command to go to Alabama at last. Remember—what became the civilian MSFC was the more lean ABMA—but I digress.

Now, what just struck me was—to whose benefit was this leak?

There are two options—

The Alabama delegation (likely the Rube Tubberville) had his own staff leak it out to spook the folks out west to do the opposite—-back SLS so as to keep Space Command before Donald can get sworn in. I think this likely—and if something gets floated in a few days we will know.

But there is another possibility—much more sinister.

Some spooky type type leaked the deal…which you would think Trump would keep under wraps so as to not sour things if this horse swapping really is a thing

This leaker likely has allegiance to the Pentagon—which means they are once again trying to undermine Trump before he can set foot back in the White House door.

Either possibility is dishonorable.

PS

Good to see some of the Lori Garver worshipers take a hit:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=61990.msg2646472#msg2646472

That is Dwayne Day, BTW.

Edward: I am very interested in detailed thoughts about how to reshape America’s Artemis program. The comments so far have been very helpful.

More please. There are a lot of very wise space geeks who comment here who have not yet chimed in.

Well, yes. SpaceX is clearly well advanced in its next powerful rocket and its lunar lander is coming along, so that is the natural choice.

But we also need to keep with the philosophy of having two venders, so rather than simply giving it to SpaceX, set up a competition, just as they did for Cargo Resupply Services and the manned transport to ISS, with at least two winners of the contracts. Each competitor or competing team has its own idea and plan for returning to the Moon, and each winner executes its own plan. Blue Origin is already working on its own lander, and there are other companies and teams that had vied for the lander contract a few years ago, so there are plenty of ideas out there. These two companies are best positioned to get us back to the Moon before the Chinese, but there could be a third company or team that could do it, too.

Isaacman need not do the redesign, but he can let three or five companies work on redesigns or wholly new designs.

This allows us to have two or three independent methods of getting to the Moon to keep a sustainable moon base sustained.

Reshaping Artemis may not be the right solution, but if one or more of the competing companies/teams puts some of Artemis’s existing plans into theirs, that is OK, too.

Robert, I’m sorry that this isn’t an engineering solution but is more a philosophical solution, working on the philosophy of fixed-price contracts to companies that supply the service rather than delivering hardware for government ownership. This thinking allows the people who know and understand their own hardware and methods to work into their strengths rather than we Monday-morning quarterbacks kibitzing about what these companies and what NASA could do or should have done.

Titan IIIs and IVs (expensive rockets that used solids) launched Cassini and other probes.

Allow the current SLS cores in the pipeline to go out as ice giant probes in place of MSR—hydrogen upper stages are best for those.

Nothing is as wasteful as throwing a rocket away *before* it even flies.

Even Paul Allen’s sister wasn’t that mean to Stratolaunch.

I’m not smart enough to comment on your idea other than to guess that maybe the angle and speed of reentry might duplicate that or a return trip from the moon. Would be glad to hear smarter folks.

One other very off topic. My bride and i fell in love with Stockholm this past summer. We have dear friends in Sollentuna and they hosted us for our first trip to Scandinavia. I had no expectations, but i will say it was a delightfully cultured and friendly city.

It seems to me that a mock-up capsule launched on a falcon 9 would be a cost effective way to test a heat shield… But I guess that is way too common sense for NASA.

Regarding the new administrator at NASA (His name eludes me… Sorry..) from what I’ve heard so far I’m liking the cut of his jib… It seems like he is all “new” space… Can only be a good thing!

( Many of the other positions Trump has set out have us scratching our heads here in Europe… I only mention this to give you guys something to have a pop at me about… But really… A Kennedy anti-vaccer ( can’t remember his name either… That’s how important it is to us here!) , in charge of public health…. ??? )

But he is going to have to. There is time for design, but not “redesign”. SpaceX will already have the components to do the job, with hard work and perhaps with BO’s help, but that is a secondary issue.

This is a critical national security issue.

The alternative is to watch the Chinese take the lead in space away from us. He is going to have to say “I didn’t start this fire, but at this point we have no choice… do we want to win or not?!”

Great discussions. I have long wondered about the feasibility of just using Starship for a Lunar program. As one of you said, Starship heatshield is intended for reentry from earth orbit not lunar missions. Of course, Starship as HLS has NO heatshield as it never returns to Earth.

Using a great online calculator site, Atomic Rockets (https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/calculators.php) I tried to answer this simply using the ideal (or Tsiolkovsky) rocket equation to try to address my question.

Boiling it down to data on Wikipedia about Starship and plugging it into the “Delta V Calculator” and second checked on the “Rocket Equation Calculator” I found that a fully refueled Starship (with heatshield) could generate enough delta V of the base Starship 100,000 kg payload to break LEO, enter LO and enter a landing burn to surface. (Yes, yes yes…Raptor engines landing etc, etc, – just trying to do a little math.)

Such a ship DID NOT have enough Delta V to return to lunar orbit. Great cargo mission.

Then I reduced the base 100,000 kg payload to about 18,000 kg or 20 US tons (I have list of what I would pack and weight wise it is about 1 1/2 X greater than the dry weight of the CSM+LM Ascent weight of an Apollo mission).

Such a 20 ton mission has enough Delta V to get from LEO to LO to LS to LO BUT NOT ENOUGH Delta V remains to return to LEO never mind landing on Earth.

Finally, I looked at sending tankers to LO to refuel the crewed mission stuck in LO to return to LEO. I don’t need to fully refuel crew ship since I just want to get back to LEO to catch my Crew Dragon ride home. 4 Lunar Tankers carrying 100,000 kg of propellant each would do it.

Using Next BigFuture website ( https://www.nextbigfuture.com/) that has an ongoing “How Much Does Starship Cost” article that periodically updates based on the latest ravings from Elon plus independent rough checks, I priced the mission.

1 Lunar Ship – 5 Tanker Ships – 5 Super Heavy Boosters – 55 total Starship launches to get one crew on one Starship to the moon and back to LEO for pick up by Crew Dragon (Elon throws that ride home in for free).

Complex? Yes. Areas for failure? Multiple. Infinitely Repeatable ? Yes, if you got the money.

The Price: Rounded up: $2 Billion (less but I plugged in a hefty 50% uncertainty factor AND rounded up) using Next Big Futures most pessimistic of three price tags of Starbase factory output.

Artemis or the Doubting Thomas plan…it all depends on your assumptions and your base case mission scenario.

Thanks for your patience.

“If a private company wanted to fly NASA astronauts under these conditions on its own capsule, I can guarantee NASA would object, and say no. In fact, it did so only a few months ago, when Boeing’s engineers said astronauts could return safely on Starliner and NASA rejected that idea. Then, safety came first!

In the case of NASA’s own Orion capsule, however, the rules don’t apply, and NASA is going to proceed with Artemis-2, manned, despite using a heat shield that really does not work as intended. With NASA’s own capsule, scheduling overrides safety.”

Hummmm. One may remember the Challenger disaster, in which “scheduling” also overrode safety concerns.

Also,

“The real issue is what to do next. How will Artemis be reshaped to use private enterprise to get to the Moon and beyond?

Isaacman can’t simply give the job to SpaceX. Nor should he. What he must do is redesign the architecture of the program to both use the resources now available as well encourage needed but unavailable resources to be developed by the private sector as fast as possible.

For example, the new program must incorporate what both SpaceX and Blue Origin are already doing with their manned lunar landers. It must also incorporate available lift capability from the entire American launch industry.”

All of this seems logical and to the point. What (safe and cost effective) resources do we have at this point for going back to the moon, what new resources need to be created, and what is the best way to deploy them? Not exactly rocket science*, but NASA has seemed congenitally incapable of employing such a straightforward, real world-oriented management approach for the last several decades.
Aided and abetted, of course, by our “best that money can buy” Congress.

*Any successful business enterprise does this as a matter of course.

In Apollo there was always discussion of the “reentry corridor”.

The (to me) undiscussed risk of a shallower angle is that your reentry corridor must be much narrower than even Apollo since you run a higher risk of skipping completely out of the atmosphere (as heard in the discussion that never really happened in Apollo 13 movie) and ending up in some highly eccentric earth orbit with no way back.

Heard no discussion of this by NASA at all and I waited for the more technical reporters to ask that question but never heard it.

Going to follow up with another post to follow up on great remarks by Edward, Ray Van Dune and Gary.

Thanks