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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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mortarion ◴[22 Oct 25 11:27 UTC] No.45667484[source]▶
Refueling the HLS in orbit, before it sets off to the moon requires at least 10 launches, but likely closer to 20, and neither Super Heavy or any future Starship tanker will be rapidly reusable that much is clear by now. For this system to work, SpaceX will need to build many more launch pads and the refueling sequence alone will take months due to boil off.

It's a dumb system invented due to the whims of a madman who should listen to his engineers instead of trying to cosplay as a rocket scientist.

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1. dotnet00 ◴[22 Oct 25 13:40 UTC] No.45669001[source]▶
Pretty much everyone is heading in the direction of orbital fuel depots and orbital refueling.We're getting pretty good at launching rockets and docking things in orbit. Prior to Starship, ULA was considering having Vulcan's upper stage have refueling capabilities, but their parent company, Boeing, saw it as a threat to their SLS money and tried to get the associated engineers fired. All HLS proposals involved some sort of refueling and reuse capability, and both accepted proposals involve orbital fuel depots.

The only reason NASA hadn't already been investigating the relevant technologies is that politicians threatened to outright cancel space science funding if NASA so much as mentioned depots (the word was actually censored in documents from NASA about HLS until the relevant senator finally retired).