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NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

(www.cnn.com)
404 points voxleone | 4 comments | 21 Oct 25 12:58 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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allenrb ◴[21 Oct 25 20:38 UTC] No.45661384[source]▶
There is just so much wrong with this from start to finish. Here are a few things, by no means inclusive:

1. 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.

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testing22321 ◴[21 Oct 25 21:34 UTC] No.45662019[source]▶
> We’ve already beaten China to the moon by 56 years, 3 months, and some change. And counting

Of course, but there a few things to consider.

1. This is a new race. The olympics happen every four years to see which nation is the current best. It seems it’s time to find out again.

2. The last time the US was dominant was 56 years ago. That’s three generations. Based on SLS and the comments here, it seems extremely unlikely the US is still dominant. Let’s find out.

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bluGill ◴[21 Oct 25 21:48 UTC] No.45662154[source]▶
What is the point of winning though? We could be doing other things in stead, and I'm going to submit that they are more valuable (you are of course welcome to disagree - this is an opinion).

Personally I hope no human lands on the moon again. I like telling my parents they are so old humans walked on the moon in their lifetime (last human left the moon December 1972 - before I was born). There is no value in this statement, but it is still fun.

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heavyset_go ◴[21 Oct 25 22:03 UTC] No.45662300[source]▶
The electronics we're typing these comments on were only rapidly miniaturized originally to be small and light enough to shoot into space.

There are second, third, etc order effects to things like a space race.

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dmvdoug ◴[21 Oct 25 22:49 UTC] No.45662717[source]▶
Nah, that’s false. Miniaturization was already underway before the Space Race. The space program absolutely benefited from it, yes. But NASA wasn’t at the forefront of those developments.
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1. heavyset_go ◴[21 Oct 25 23:01 UTC] No.45662843[source]▶
I was talking about rapid miniaturization, not just miniaturization in general, which I agree was underway before any space development.

NASA literally had departments and budgets dedicated to miniaturization.

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2. dmvdoug ◴[22 Oct 25 00:02 UTC] No.45663359[source]▶
I’ll give you an example: the technology in the Instrument Unit on the Saturn V, which was the computer that controlled the Saturn V during launch, was largely derived from System/360. By technology here I mean things like the Unit Logic Devices (ULDs) out of which the logic boards in the Launch Vehicle Digital Computer (LVDC) were made. No surprise, I suppose, given that it was contracted to IBM’s Federal Systems Division.
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3. m4rtink ◴[22 Oct 25 12:38 UTC] No.45668144[source]▶
Sure, but compare density of a s360 mainframe and the Apollo Guidance Computer - they pumped a lot of money into integrated circuits just as they weee becoming viable to hit their size, mass and power targets.

Sure, this would likely have happend anyway, but possibly later with all related knock off effects.

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4. bluGill ◴[22 Oct 25 12:53 UTC] No.45668328{3}[source]▶
> Sure, this would likely have happend anyway, but possibly later with all related knock off effects.

What are we missing because they did that though? Or what came latter? There is no way to answer this. It is easy to see what happened because of effort, but not what you didn't get (or got latter) because to focused on something else.