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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: 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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1. HardCodedBias ◴[22 Oct 25 01:57 UTC] No.45664108[source]▶
IIUC there are few "prime" locations on the moon. NASA publicly named 13 specific candidate regions.

The nations will will likely use "safety zones" to exclude others from their base of operations. We'll see the radius of these zones but expect 200m - 2km for a start.

There is a reason to think that there is a race. Without very advanced automation all of this is pointless, but I am willing to wager that many think that advanced automation will occur within a short timeframe.