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NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

(www.cnn.com)
404 points voxleone | 1 comments | 21 Oct 25 12:58 UTC | HN request time: 0.262s | source
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namlem ◴[21 Oct 25 15:28 UTC] No.45657019[source]▶
This would be such a dumb move on the government's part. "Lose the new space race" is ridiculous PR-brain. We are not racing to the same goal! China is trying to land on the moon, we are trying to establish a permanent presence. There is no value to merely returning to the moon to say we did it, and Starship is the only vehicle that can plausibly deliver huge quantities of cargo to the lunar surface.
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random3 ◴[21 Oct 25 15:40 UTC] No.45657163[source]▶
What’s the main motivation for the moon? Is it a better location than the international space station? What’s the reasoning there?
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vrindavan1 ◴[21 Oct 25 15:54 UTC] No.45657333[source]▶
I think its to prepare for mars (sort of), its the closest place where we can build a self-sustaining civilization.
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1. oceanplexian ◴[21 Oct 25 19:56 UTC] No.45660896[source]▶
"Close" means a different thing in Space than it does on Earth.

If the planets are aligned the Delta-V is not that different between the two (Mars is about twice as much Delta-V for 100x the distance). You can use aerobraking in the Mars atmosphere but can do no such thing on the Moon. And then the last problem is that on the Moon you need to budget for a round trip, but on Mars we could produce fuel on the surface for the return trip. When you start thinking about all that it's obvious that Mars makes more sense.