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Hacker News Hacker News1. We’ve already beaten China to the moon by 56 years, 3 months, and some change. And counting.
2. Nothing based around SLS is remotely serious. The cost and timeline of doing anything with it are unreasonable. It is an absolute dead-end. The SpaceX Super Heavy has been more capable arguably as early as the second flight test and certainly now. They could have built a “dumb” second stage at any time, but aren’t that short-sighted.
3. Blue Origin? I’ve had high hopes for the guys for two decades now. Don’t hold your breath.
4. Anyone else? Really, really don’t hold your breath.
This whole “race to the moon, part II” is almost criminally stupid. Land on the moon when we can accomplish something there, not just to prove we haven’t lost our mojo since Apollo.
A scary way to set a schedule on a complex project with lives at stake. They don't care though.
Let's say we forgot how to do heart transplants. Once we did them a few times perfectly, got all surgical techniques right, but patients died shortly after the surgery due to rejection. We quit the whole transplants stuff for years, the techniques and the equipments were lost over time. But then, some 40 years later, we now knew a lot more about immunology, have incredibly advanced drugs, and an aging population. So, because of that, we decided to develop the surgical procedure techniques, long-lost, again.
This is a good analogy for the situation. The moon is an important milestone for further commercial and scientific exploration of the space. We lost the ability we once had to reach it. And anyway, we were not as ready as we are today to follow the next logical steps. If we manage to harvest water from moon ice now, we will be establishing the basis for a kind of serious exploration and development that we weren't nearly ready to achieve in the past.
So, no, we are not doing it just to prove "we haven't lost our mojo", for bragging rights. We are doing it because we are in a development stage where it makes sense to finally return to the moon.
Much better for making your friends rich.
I would be an adult about it and respond reasonable, perhaps even ask NASA for help, publicly. I'm afraid Elon is about to give them the finger and drive around on the moon by himself, two fingers pointing at NASA head quarters. I would smile about that a bit, I admit.
Duffy and Isaacman are fighting to be head of NASA. This is that fight spilling from Washington over the weekend onto Twitter today because of course it has with this administration.
Duffy, as acting head of NASA, is trying to lob a threat at Musk, Isaacman’s patron. He’s done so poorly, and so here we are.
Could this just be a pressure tactic on SpaceX?
Is this a "SpaceX spread itself too thin and wasn't able to keep its own pre-agreed deadlines" situation or a "The government-specified contract was unrealistically aggressive / so vaguely-specified that it could not be realized within its original timetable" situation?
A full-flow staged combustion engine, which proven works (yay) most of the time (not yay). If you follow the Starship launches, look at the random engines that go out on the Super Heavy every time it launches. The engines going out during ascent aren't planned outages.
A rapidly re-usable second stage. This is by far the most challenging part of the program. It turns out, returning things from space is mad difficult. And while I think it's great that we are investigating ways to make this happen, I'm a bit bearish on whether Starship itself will be the vehicle and team that ultimately figures this out. However, at the very least, there's a ton of science being done here that will ultimately help making this a reality.
Starship isn't returning in any meaningfully reusable form just yet. And while they've figured out how to get the thing up suborbital, there's yet no guarantee on the survivability of the vehicle itself. I am for sure certain that Elon is very likely unhappy with having to use heat shield tiles because they are not reusable. We don't yet know the stresses on the vehicle itself when returning from space and just how reusable the second stage actually is. Nor, for that matter, just how usable the second stage is.
Do I think they'll figure out how to get it to orbit? Of course. Do I think they'll figure out how to make it rapidly reusable? I'm not sure. And we won't yet know for a couple of years.
Getting a payload to LEO as far as rocket launches are concerned is "easy" relative to the loftier goals of the Moon, and by much further extension, Mars. The Moon is significantly harder to pull off and that's why the Saturn V was a 3-stage rocket.
In order to make all of this worth it, Starship and Super Heavy must be rapidly reusable--with a turnaround measured in hours/days, not weeks and months. And I'm just not sure it's there yet. Which really sucks, because getting mass to orbit is critically important for us to dominate our solar system.
I think the research is important, personally. And I'm glad we're investing at least some money into these projects. But there's no way Starship and Super Heavy meet the timelines allocated. But I'm wishing the best for the team to figure out something. And if not them, then some future generation that piggybacks off of the work they did to do it better.
Now that this has happened, expect a future democrat administration to have its revenge on human spaceflight centers in red states. Given the rot that has set in under that politically protected status, I can't see this as a bad thing.
SpaceX: makes political contribution to executive branch
NASA: "SpaceX is back on the menu, boys!"
I don't know enough about whether or not they really are behind or if this is just a bit of sensationalized reporting. But this is how it should have likely been from the beginning.
Could we just bring back the shuttle?
Artemis from the beginning was just politics. And it wasn't driven by how to best do things, or any kind of coherent strategy. Its basically was a compromise, that had one of its pillars, that SLS and Orion need to continue to be used. Those two project have spend decades getting untold amounts of money. And even after all that money, their development isn't finished and they would need more money.
Then with the very, very little money left over, NASA tried to precure a moon lander. It was basically no money at all.
SpaceX won this competition, because SpaceX was willing to do things for an absurdly cheap price. Mostly because they are already investming themselves into the project. And their own investment was significantly larger then what NASA paid them.
Only after BlueOrigin lost, did they start a massive lobby campaign to figure out how to get more money out of congress so they could fund another lander.
But both landers, SpaceX and BlueOrigin, do not receive enough money to cover their cost. Not even close. So basically the US is relaying on massive companies in SpaceX case, and simply the private money of Bezos in BlueOrigins case to sponsor a moon program for them. Because all NASA money is going into legacy contracts that have very bad return on invesmtent.
The political move to now blame SpaceX for being late is just an excuse so that the overall project doesn't have to be reevaluated. The reality is, SpaceX is likely not the only reason for a delay. The suits are unlikley to be ready anyway. And even if Artemis III goes off, the SLS Block 2 is behind as well and will cost many additional billions.
And threating SpaceX with paying some legacy company to do a cost-plus lander isn't going to do anything, its just a fantasy thread, or at best the deamnd by some in congress to push even more money into legacy companies. Its not going to fix Artemis III or anything. Its funny how delays in cost-plus contract always lead to simply more money and more political support. Almost as if there was some other motives behind the decition when delays are unacceptable and when they are.
The reality of all of this is that NASA is completely mismanaged and fundamentally set up incorrectly. And just making big political waves on blaming whoever is politically out of favor will never actually work. The only reason SpaceX and the New Space economy exist is because clever teams inside of NASA and in Obamas team managed to sneak a few good programs, Commercial Cargo and Commercial Crew past congress. Without those people, the US would already be far behind in terms of space.
The question the US (Congress/NASA) should be asking is not 'how can we get Artemis III' but rather 'what kind of Space program do we want over the next 30 years'. The US has an incredible space industry, and more private investment then everybody combinaed. There is no question that the US and NASA could be far, far beyond everbody else, and achieve amazing thigns, but Congress and NASA fundamentally misguided approch is holding it back.
So please, stop talking about Artemis III and start asking some more fundmanetal questions.
https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/why-are-you-gay-elon-mus...
Most were expected, when pushing the rocket to its limits to see where it would fail.
> the company achieved two sub-orbital missions for its monster rocket - impressive, but still more than 200,000 miles (322,000 km) from the Moon.
The test flights are suborbital due to FAA licensing requirements until they are ready to test returning to the launch tower. The role of Starship lander version in Artemis is not to directly launch to the Moon, but act as a shuttle between an orbiting vessel around the Moon and the surface of the Moon. So the comparison in miles is non-sensical.
> Acting Administrator Sean Duffy said the company was "behind schedule"
SpaceX is planning to test orbital refueling in 2026. It was originally scheduled for late summer of 2025, so not late with more than a couple of months. It is certainly not the slowest cog in the system. Now, it is scheduled for 2027, and SpaceX will likely test in H1 of 2026.
> Elon Musk, the boss of SpaceX, fired back: "SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry. Moreover, Starship will end up doing the whole Moon mission. Mark my words."
SpaceX can completely drop out of the Artemis program and still bring astronauts to the moon earlier than Artemis.
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There are also delays with Boeing, Axiom, Lockheed Martin (and Blue Origin although for a different mission).
spacex: at work
nasa: not at work
why?
"it's 10 years from now and they're behind schedule", what kind of schedule is this?
> "We have been working with a cross-industry team of companies and together we are looking forward to addressing Secretary Duffy's request to meet our country’s lunar objectives," said Behnken, a retired NASA astronaut.
https://www.reuters.com/science/us-seek-rival-bids-artemis-3...
Dreams aside, this story is court politics: "Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who is NASA’s acting administrator, has told people that he wants to lead the space agency" [2]. "So does Jared Isaacman—the billionaire entrepreneur who was the nominee earlier this year before President Trump withdrew his support."
With "both men...jockeying to lead NASA," and, just "this past weekend, advisers and lawmakers representing Duffy and Isaacman [having] called contacts in the Trump administration—including the president himself," this announcement is politics through PR.
Duffy may threatening Elon to have his man back down. He may be going scorched Earth, signalling to Trump that Musk's decision making isn't to be trusted.
[1] https://opsjournal.org/DocumentLibrary/Uploads/The_Lunar_Spa... 2017; 2bn US2017 ~ 2.6bn US2025
[2] https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-nasa-administrator...
Are they ahead of everyone else? yes, sadly, but Starship is a questionable design for a lunar mission, starting with the fact that it'll require an elevator to go up and down... 50 meters down.
And for Mars it's even worse, no real way of refueling and even if there was, it's also hard enough for them to get off Earth imagine winging it from Mars with all the potential hazards such as dust.
Well at least Musk will make good money from space launches, hopefully Starlink is declared illegal for the potential future atmospheric catastrophy the massive launches of LEO satellites might cause.
I wonder why this happened. Hopefully not to satisfy the ego of the POTUS.
That kind of rush leads to disaster
First he is now called Sean Dummy. “Should someone whose biggest claim to fame is climbing trees be running America’s space program?”
Musk ... decided to respond by posting a meme of a reporter saying, “Why are you gay?” ... He called Duffy “Sean Dummy” ... Musk posted a reality TV clip calling him an “a*s rocket”
1. Starship is still far from being production-ready, proven to be reliable and rated for human transport, a goal that will itself take many launches beyond being proven for delivering payloads to LEO and geosynchronous orbits (as well, I guess, deep space missions?);
2. The market for commercial Starship launches is far from proven and the risk of this is being ignored or downplayed by so many. Starship's biggest problem and competitor is... the Falcon 9, something the Falcon 9 never had to contend with. The market for even larger payloads seem to be limited. The evidence? There are over 100 Falcon 9 launches a year. There's about ~1 Falcon Heavy launch per year. And Falcon Heavy is pretty cost effective. The biggest customer seems to be the military who wants to get really large payloads to geosynchronous orbit. Now will Starlink bootstrap Starship demand in the same way that it did for Falcon 9 reusable boosters? Maybe. But it's not proven; and
3. Starship just doesn't make a great Moon lander. Why? You have to land this really tall vehicle in low gravity on unknown ground when it could possibly tip over in a way that Apollo landers never really could (because they were short, wide and significantly lighter). And then when you land? Your astronauts are ~40 meters off the ground. How are they getting back and forth?
Starship actually reminds me of the Steve Ballmer "Windows everywhere" era. Or the F35 jet-for-all-branches boondoggle. Ballmer wanted to run Windows on every device where Apple launched iOS alongside MacOS. Ballmer bought Sidekick, which was really successful at the time, and basically killed it by not innovating and trying to migrate it to Windows Mobile OS.
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of simple minds." as the quote goes.
These projects end up being not very good at any application in an effort to be able to do too much. I'm starting to wonder if this is Starship's core problem.
What might save Starship is that BlueOrigin is absolutely nowhere, ULA is a joke, the Europeans are nowhere and SLS is a massive jobs program. I have more faith in China's space program than any of those.
Makes you wonder, since Musk knew Trump is a pedo all along (and he loves calling people out as "pedo guy"), why did he invest so much money, time, reputation, ketamine, and Nazi salutes into getting Trump elected, then cowardly retract one of the only true things he ever tweeted, just to support the coverup instead of the truth?
If Musk was still in tight with Trump, and this potential booting was based on a strong, factual basis, would it still be in the works? Who knows!
Still marking his words on self-driving vehicles so I guess we can add this to the list. What’s the casualty count so far on that one btw?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...
Whereas all the competition has to use their own R&D budget to show capability to meet the requirements of the second contract, the winner of the first contract used the government's R&D money to be competitive.
https://old.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1lojll9/if_its_th...