NASA describes Starship’s first unmanned test lunar landing
In a briefing focused on the science that could be placed on the mission, a NASA official yesterday provided a status update of SpaceX’s first unmanned test flight by Starship to the Moon.
First, the official revealed that NASA is only requiring SpaceX to demonstrate a successful landing. Take-off will not be required. Also,
Starship is not designed to fly directly to the Moon like NASA’s Space Launch System, however. Instead, the first stage puts it only in Earth orbit. To go further, it must fill up with propellant at a yet-to-be-built orbiting fuel depot. Other Starships are needed to deliver propellant to the depot.
Watson-Morgan described the Concept of Operations for Starship’s Artemis III mission, starting with launch of the fuel depot, then a number of “propellant aggregation” launches to fill up the depot, then launch of the Starship that will go to Moon.
Previously SpaceX suggested that the ship would be directly refueled by subsequent Starships, with no middle-man fueling depot. It could be either engineering had made the depot necessary, or NASA politics have insisted upon it.
Finally, the talk outlined the elevator SpaceX is developing to lower the astronauts and equipment to the ground from Starship’s top.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
In a briefing focused on the science that could be placed on the mission, a NASA official yesterday provided a status update of SpaceX’s first unmanned test flight by Starship to the Moon.
First, the official revealed that NASA is only requiring SpaceX to demonstrate a successful landing. Take-off will not be required. Also,
Starship is not designed to fly directly to the Moon like NASA’s Space Launch System, however. Instead, the first stage puts it only in Earth orbit. To go further, it must fill up with propellant at a yet-to-be-built orbiting fuel depot. Other Starships are needed to deliver propellant to the depot.
Watson-Morgan described the Concept of Operations for Starship’s Artemis III mission, starting with launch of the fuel depot, then a number of “propellant aggregation” launches to fill up the depot, then launch of the Starship that will go to Moon.
Previously SpaceX suggested that the ship would be directly refueled by subsequent Starships, with no middle-man fueling depot. It could be either engineering had made the depot necessary, or NASA politics have insisted upon it.
Finally, the talk outlined the elevator SpaceX is developing to lower the astronauts and equipment to the ground from Starship’s top.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The use of a propellant depot ship in the Starship lunar architecture is not new and is not NASA’s idea. The depot ship has been part of the HLS Starship proposal from the beginning and is even mentioned in the Source Selection Document NASA published at the time SpaceX was awarded the HLS contract. It’s in the list of risk factors.
Dick Eagleson: But isn’t that depot ship simply another Starship? That was how I understood it. According to the report above, NASA seems to be talking about a completely different design. Am I wrong?
Comment on the HLS Lander design: I would vote for a set of notches or rings for climbing back up to the airlock entrance in the event of an elevator failure. At 1/6 gee it should not require superhuman effort, just care. If you have to lift off with the elevator platform deployed, no biggie… no atmospheric drag.
Is what is being described is: Starships lofted into low Earth orbit destined for the moon will be only partially filled because the heavy boosters can’t loft a fully fueled starship?
Lofted 1/3rd loaded, it takes two more partially fueled starships to fully fuel the first?
A one way Starship to land in the center of a crater as a feed horn-wet base might need less fuel than a full Lunar Starship.
At this point I find it difficult to take Artemis seriously. Artemis is the only remotely plausible purpose for SLS and Orion, so I don’t really take them seriously either.
Starship will probably be great as a launch vehicle, but that is all it is right now. There hasn’t been much real work to make it into anything else. It will have to be done essentially from scratch and that is hard for anybody. Also, remember Dragon Rider and Falcon Heavy. Both were supposed to be versions of operational predecessors but turned out to be fundamentally different beasts.
When Spacex does that work it will be as a purely financial venture. Spacex’s passion is launch service and Mars. That’s it. Musk and his crew will see it as a regretfully necessary distraction. He won’t put his best people onto it.
We forget how long Falcon 9 & Dragon to get to where they are now. Think from the time the first significant resources were expended on until a reliable and safe capability was in place. Starship (even as a launch vehicle only) may be only halfway down that road.
Anyway you put it, all signs point to this taking a long time. With the current plan I doubt anybody is putting anyone on the moon before 2030. By then the program will be canceled or the entire landing architecture will be redone. Probably to scale it down radically, having Spacex develop a smaller, purpose built lander. That may be what was planned to begin with. You don’t come up with anything like any part of Artemis if you seriously want to go to the moon.