Dick Eagleston: Y’know, if I argued incoherently like Jeff Wright, I could have pointed out that the Falcon Heavy Tesla flew far higher than SLS has or in fact ever will. So there!

But then, I don’t normally argue incoherently. Makes my brain hurt.

Quite right about the long-term irrelevance of SLS-Orion to the real settlement/industrialization/exploration of the Moon. I expect Elon to deliver a Starship replacement for SLS-Orion at about the same time as HLS Starship is delivered and for it to start flying SpaceX-only lunar missions shortly after Artemis 3. At that point, let us all hope SLS-Orion can be taken out back of the barn and given the Old Yeller treatment regardless of the Artemis 4 & 5 language in the Big Beautiful Bill and we are spared live crew launched on the maiden flight of EUS and all of the other currently-planed future stupidities. NASA can conduct Artemis 4, 5 and beyond by buying tickets on Elon’s Starships.

Jeff Wright,

The fact that the SLS core stage of Artemis 1 achieved a higher altitude at apogee than any Super Heavy or Starship launched thus far is pretty much the definition of a pyrrhic “victory.” Unlike any past or future SLS core stage, Super Heavies have been recovered and reused already, presaging what will soon be SOP for the stack.

The comment about Jared Isaacman and Sen. Katie Britt is incoherent. Space Command is part of the War Department, not NASA. I have no idea what you imagine the connection is, but the rest of us don’t see one.

As for Space Command moving personnel to Alabama, am I supposed to object to that? I do r have a problem with it.

Changing a long time concentration limit requires a lot of testing. Did the do multiple tests to find out where it would ignite. Is it 80% one day and 60% another.

NASA has seriously lost it.

ww.al.com/news/2026/02/700-plus-space-command-personnel-in-alabama-by-end-of-2028-sen-katie-britt-says.html

Call it reconstruction.

We seem to be living in interesting times, in the “Chinese Curse” sense. Not only with our computers, but with AI, too. Our space program is getting better, though.

Dick Eagleson: To some extent, the conversation here has been very informative, in that it made very clear the absurdity of NASA’s entire Artemis mission framework, relying on SLS and Orion. This is a pig that won’t fly, no matter how NASA tries to reframe it.

We all know that Elon’s new plans require kicking SLS-Orion to the curb in favor of a new Starship version that can launch crews to LEO, refill and take them to lunar orbit for rendezvous with an HLS Starship, then return crew to Earth later. I’ve been predicting such a thing since well before Elon’s recent official declaration of a SpaceX Moon program. I think the only reason Elon hasn’t publicly announced such a development to be in the works yet is that he sees no advantage in appearing to kick SLS-Orion while it is down given the current SLS-Orion troubles. Anyone with sense knows a new SLS-Orion-replacing Starship is coming. Elon chose to emphasize the plan for a lunar mass driver as that doesn’t compete with anything in NASA’s portfolio. Lunar Crew Starship can be announced in an “oh, by the way” fashion later, once the Artemis 2 mission is over.

Ray Van Dune,

By the time Artemis 3 is able to be undertaken, Starship will pretty much be able to be launched on-demand. The upcoming test launch of B19 and S39 will be the dozenth Starship full-stack launch in less than two years. There will be many more than 12 launches over the next two years. And by 2028, when Artemis 3 is currently scheduled to fly, SpaceX will have at least five pads from which it can launch Starships. There will be no necessity to launch HLS way in advance of SLS-Orion for Artemis 3.

Jeff Wright,

Stoke’s booster stage runs on methalox, not hydrolox, so it can’t ever have any LH2 loading problems on its booster stage by definition. Stoke’s upper stage does use LH2, but has already been filled and tested many times in both its original and its updated configuration and no problems have been reported. The proof of that particular pudding will be in what happens at Stoke’s actual Canaveral pad and not just its test facilities, but we may not have more than a few more months to wait to see that. Try not to be too disappointed if Stoke provides no long-running launch glitch soap opera comparable to those associated with SLS-Orion.

Where is lunar Starship? Right now the test article’s upper-works are being built somewhere in the vast interior of the Starbase StarFactory away from those giant view windows along the road. The landing gear are being drop-tested inside that giant cabana at McGregor. The lower 2/3 of the HLS Starship test article will be built based on V3 or V4 technology once those have completed testing and development. The test launch should occur sometime in the back half of 2027 or early 2028.

The Ford, San Antonio, America, and Virginia classes are not *surface combatants.* And yet, even so, all of those classes experienced major delays, major problems being brought online! The Ford is a particular embarrassment, far over budget, far behind schedule, some of its key systems still not reliable. The Virginia block III/IV/V can probably be considered a success, but we simply can’t build them quickly enough.

The failures I have in mind are the actual frontline surface combatants: the Zumwalt DDX, CGX, LCS, and now, most recently, the Constellation class. NAVSEA bulloxed them all up. And then there’s the Columbia class….. It doesn’t help that our ship building industry is a disaster area, too. But that has been a problem decades in the making, going back to the 1960s.

With rare exceptions, Navy procurement has just been a disaster since the end of the Cold War.

2. Once Orion is checked out, it will go TLI, followed shortly by HLS. Not sure why HLS- first would not be more secure.

“A prophet is without honor except in his hometown, among his relatives, and in his own household”

Mark 6:4, Matthew 13:57, Luke 4:24, John 4:44 (?!)

Or, they are listening to ‘Baker Street’.

Dick Eagleson noted: “The “common cold” seems both more common than usual and nastier this year.”

“Shut it down! Shut it all down!” Westworld 1973; World 2019

Edward: The delay posting your comments does not appear to be on my end. I will ask an obvious question: Did you refresh the post where you commented? That might bring it up faster.

I think that people here are merely discussing a possible workaround for the fiasco that is SLS. I think that we all understand that SpaceX’s new plan is to work faster than SLS-Orion can (a very low bar — a very very low bar).

Blue Origin is refocusing the company on getting their Human Landing System (HLS) completed, perhaps even before SpaceX gets theirs ready for Artemis III.

SpaceX may be focusing on completing their HLS in time for the same NASA mission, or they may be working toward having it ready even sooner so that SpaceX itself can use it to put a base (Moonbase Alpha?) on the Moon as soon as possible in order to use material from the Moon for their new spaceborne artificial intelligence project. For their various Earth orbiting projects, which they have announced a need for a million satellites, making them on the Moon could save a fortune by avoiding launching from the Earth’s surface.

I would not be surprised if SpaceX chose, this time, to beat NASA to their own destination. If SpaceX is ready to go to the Moon before Artemis III, then I suspect the company will do so. Four years ago, they may have chosen to not embarrass NASA and delayed their first Starship integrated flight test until after NASA did their own first SLS launch, but if they chose so, then that was obviously a mistake. How much sooner could they have learned by launching months sooner even if such early launches used kerosene Merlin engines rather than methane Raptor engines?

With NASA rapidly becoming a minor customer, SpaceX may be less worried about upstaging them to the Moon than they did four years ago when NASA was a more important customer of theirs. Exploring manufacturing on the Moon is becoming highly important to SpaceX.

I would not be surprised if Blue Origin were realizing the same thing. Blue Origin’s goal is to move as much polluting industry into space as possible, and they may be realizing that they can do it sooner rather than later.
__________________
Jeff Wright asked: “And if this happened to Stoke you would have played it down. Arty III will incorporate changes. And where is Lunar Starship?

And Stoke’s rocket is still in development, whereas SLS is supposed to be operational. Instead, SLS is still behaving as though it is still a development project but being operated as though it is operational enough to be safe for human spaceflight. We are seeing that SLS is not as ready for prime time as some people think.

The Starship HLS is still in development, where it, Stoke Space’s Nova, SLS, and Orion still belong. The former two are where they belong, the latter two are dangerous.
__________________
Robert, several times when I hit “Post Comment,” the comment does not show up for several minutes or a few hours. This happened a couple of times this morning. I have assumed that this meant they went into the moderation queue, requiring you to click the button, rather than going to some form of comment purgatory until the software puts it into the database.

And where is Lunar Starship?

Hello? The Ford-class aircraft carrier, the most powerful surface combatant in all of naval history, says “Hi!”

Not to mention the USS San Antonio was laid down only three weeks shy of “this century” and commissioned in 2006. Then there’s the America class, with the USS America laid down in 2009 and commissioned in 2014.

Now you did say “surface combatant”, but there’s also the Virginia-class submarine, with the USS Virginia brought into service in 2004.

So this century we have the Virginia-class submarine in 2004, the San Antonio-class LPD in 2006, the America-class amphibious assault ship in 2014, and the Ford-class aircraft carrier in 2017.

The weird thing is, we can do the big ships. It’s the small ones that give us trouble.

“In such a case, I would imagine the refilling would best be done at the end of this loiter period to eliminate any possibility of needing to do any last-minute top-off before Trans-Lunar Injection.”

Dick, you highlight what I think is the real problem … how will we know when we’re at “the end of this loiter period”?!

No matter when the SLS launch is scheduled, it can still be cancelled, and slip by anything from a day to three weeks. Thus, by definition, if we launch SLS first, it is either accept an arbitrarily long on-orbit wait, or figure out a way to launch HLS “on demand”!

I don’t think the latter can work. It is at best a source of delay with people in orbit, and at worst a safety compromise if we go TLI on SLS without HLS at least on the way.

All: I think everyone is missing something. When Elon Musk said he was shifting focus to the Moon, he made it clear he wasn’t simply doing it to aid NASA’s Artemis program. He intends to fly his own missions there, independent of Orion or SLS.

Thus, it doesn’t matter what happens with SLS, SpaceX is planning to bypass it, and do that very openly.

The protests from the control freaks in Congress should be spectacular to behold.

Edward: I haven’t noticed any big increase in moderation from you. If you include two links in the post, it will have to be approved by me, but that’s just a simple click.

My posited scenario for Artemis 3 assumed HLS Starship could do most of its waiting on the ground, launching only when all of what I think will be the inevitable fiddle-farting with the SLS-Orion stack is closing in on a conclusion and can be seen to allow a crew launch by a reasonably certain date. At that point, the HLS Starship would launch to LEO, refill from the waiting depot ship and then proceed on out to NRHO to await the arrival of Orion.

I hadn’t considered the possibility of HLS Starship launching to LEO well in advance and then loitering there for awhile, but that is certainly an additional possibility. In such a case, I would imagine the refilling would best be done at the end of this loiter period to eliminate any possibility of needing to do any last-minute top-off before Trans-Lunar Injection.

What the boil-off rate for the depot ships will be is an interesting question. If lunar missions are soon frequent – which they will only be once SLS-Orion are in the rearview mirror for good and crew missions are run using Starships that can both carry crew from Earth’s surface to lunar orbit and later return from lunar orbit to Earth’s surface – then the interval between receipt of a final tanker-load of prop and the transfer of a full load to a lunar transfer Starship or an HLS lander will likely be fairly short.

As prep for departure of Mars-bound armadas at 26-month intervals, however, depot ships allocated for this purpose will need to maintain near-zero prop loss for periods of at least two years. I would anticipate a continuous stream of tankers shuttling from ground to LEO to fill up as many depot ships as will be needed to refill the armada vessels over a period of a few weeks prior to departure time.

As lunar missions ramp up, there will also be a need for depot ships in lunar orbit to refill HLS Starships for multiple runs to and from the lunar surface once the landers have arrived in lunar orbit for the first time. The details of this dance will be interesting. Will lunar-orbit depot ships be the same as LEO depot ships? Will there be two types of LEO depot ships, one for lunar missions and the other for Mars missions?

It’s going to be interesting to see what develops.

A good point, but I agree with Dick Eagleson, that SpaceX could conceivably keep their HLS Starship at their propellant depot until SLS successfully launches, then send Starship to lunar orbit/Gateway. It is a workaround, which a well designed and efficiently operated system would not need.
_____________
From Richard M’s linked quote from Casey Handmer:

Coincidentally it also took 1173 days for Hyman Rickover and his team to ship the world’s first nuclear power reactor, wrapped in a fully functional submarine, for about a third of the total cost of the SLS’s botched ground support equipment, in the 1950s. What a difference a serious team makes!

Although that is an apples to oranges comparison, the point is well taken about the seriousness. Congress and NASA were not serious about getting to the Moon until about a year ago, and they seem to have forgotten how to do things right. SpaceX has spent years testing and improving its hardware, from ground support equipment to flight test units to manufacturing facilities. They have used test tanks many times in order to do improvements without the need to wait for a flight unit. Undoubtedly they have a similar philosophy for their software, too, but that is much harder for us to observe. NASA, on the other hand, seems to have assumed that they had their hydrogen loading problem solved and did not continue testing and improving their system over the past three years. The difference in philosophies is striking, and as Robert pointed out, it is entirely the fault of NASA’s management.
______________
Robert,
I’m sorry that so many of my posts have been going into mediation, today, which adds to your workload at a poor time for you. I hope you feel better soon.

And thank you for your concern. Sadly I feel worse today than yesterday. I’m going to bed.

John: In further defense of the SLS team and the ground crew, SLS is a hardware poor project. They can’t do fueling tests until they get the rocket on the launchpad. So, they wait three years between launches, twiddling their thumbs.

This situation is entirely the fault of NASA’s management. SLS is a badly designed rocket that can’t launch reliably because the kinks can’t be worked out between launches.

I will just say we are leaning forward with transparency, sharing the blemishes and the successes, because for a program as costly and important to national security as Artemis, the public is entitled to the facts.

– The confidence test related to the seals we repaired and replaced after WDR-1 provided a great deal of data, and we observed materially lower leak rates compared to prior observations during WDR-1. I would not say something broke that caused the premature end to the test, as much as we observed enough and reached a point where waiting out additional troubleshooting was unnecessary.

– The test was performed Thursday afternoon the 12th. Crew-12 launched early the morning of the 13th. The Artemis II test data review took place the afternoon of the 13th, and we released the blog update that evening. I believe we acted in a timely manner, considering we did not want to create needless confusion alongside a crewed launch to the space station.

– Considering the issues observed during the lead-up to Artemis I, and the long duration between missions, we should not be surprised there are challenges entering the Artemis II campaign. That does not excuse the situation, but we understand it. I am impressed with the NASA team and our contractors working diligently through the campaign. They are professionals, and they know the dream they are trying to enable. I will say near-conclusively for Artemis III, we will cryoproof the vehicle before it gets to the pad, and the propellant loading interfaces we are troubleshooting will be redesigned.

– As I have stated many times, the President ensured Artemis would endure through dozens of missions, enabling repeatable and affordable operations in the lunar environment as we construct and operate a Moon base. The architecture will continue to evolve as we learn and as industry capabilities mature. Simply said, where we begin is not where we will end.

There is still a great deal of work ahead to prepare for this historic mission. We will not launch unless we are ready and the safety of our astronauts will remain the highest priority. We will keep everyone informed as NASA prepares to return to the Moon.

https://x.com/NASAAdmin/status/2022701450057470189

P.S. Hope you’re feeling better today, Bob.

In defense of the SLS team, they aren’t even close to the worst example of government corruption and ineptitude.

Reminds me of the fact that the U.S. Navy has failed to bring into service a single successful major surface combatant ship class in this century.