NASA Announcement for the Moon

[ecarfan]

NASA Artemis III diagram I had not seen before. Where is the “Gateway”? Has it been cancelled? It appears the Starship HLS has replaced it.

Now if SLS was replaced with an FH with Orion on top…

 

[JB47394]

Now if SLS was replaced with an FH with Orion on top…

If they did that, they'd be left with Orion at Geostationary Transfer Orbit at best. Falcon Heavy doesn't have the delta-V to send Orion to the Moon.

Here's the SpaceX solution as I see it - which is ultimately a dead end:

1. Launch Orion and service module to LEO on Falcon Heavy.
2. Launch the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) to LEO on Falcon Heavy.
3. Launch Crew Dragon on Falcon 9.

I can't find the mass of the ICPS, but I assume Falcon Heavy can place it in LEO. This stage is critical because it provides the delta-V between LEO and Moon orbit.

There are two big problems here:

1. The SLS and SpaceX hardware don't interoperate. SpaceX would have to develop hardware to mate Falcon Heavy to Orion and the ICPS. Worse, the ICPS is a hydrolox vehicle, and I doubt the Falcon Heavy launch facilities can support such a payload.
2. Orion and the ICPS aren't designed for orbital docking. They're designed to be stacked on the ground and staged on the way to the Moon.

We really need a methalox propellant depot at the Moon. Without propellant depots at our interesting destinations, sustained human presence is just impractical. If not methalox, then hydrolox - which is probably the better option given that it becomes possible wherever there is sunlight and water ice.

 

[TunaBug]

Orion and the ICPS aren't designed for orbital docking

How do astronauts get to/from Orion/Starship if they don't dock? EVA?

 

[JB47394]

How do astronauts get to/from Orion/Starship if they don't dock? EVA?

Orion and ICPS are not designed for docking, but there is a international standard for vehicle docking, and Crew Dragon, Orion and Crew Starship will all support that style of docking. There is enough docking of crewed vehicles to each other for that standard to exist, but we just don't dock rocket stages like ICPS to stuff. Like I said, we traditionally stack them on the ground, then separate them during the mission, never to be used again.

 

[scaesare]

Seems like perhaps the right place for this:

As NASA watches Starship closely, here’s what the agency wants to see next

"What happens if I don't have a Human Landing System available to execute a mission?"

arstechnica.com

 

[TunaBug]

Seems like perhaps the right place for this:

As NASA watches Starship closely, here’s what the agency wants to see next

"What happens if I don't have a Human Landing System available to execute a mission?"

arstechnica.com

Cool article, thank you.

I'm a little disappointed in Eric Berger, he usually has fairly unbiased articles, but this one seems to just want to present that for Artemis III NASA is primarily skeptical of SpaceX/HLS. Whereas the quote that he included from Katherine Koerner sounds more a lot of NASA faffing about with project plans for Plan A, Plan B, etc, for every single component and every combination of component alternatives. That includes HLS of course, but they do that for everything. If there's a specific issue with HLS then I didn't catch it.

The most interesting to me was the stuff at the bottom under "What SpaceX needs to demonstrate" that describes the upcoming Starship propellant transfer demo "early next year" (discussed already somewhere on this forum). The slide has a lot of good information about that.

 

[ecarfan]

The article seemed fair to me. It’s not about the many critical things that have to happen for Artemis III, it’s about Starship and HLS progress. The statement from Koerner is pretty reasonable.

I would love to see a modified Artemis III mission with a crewed Orion docking with a Starship in LEO. That would be cool.

Eric Berger: “Some of my best sources have put the most likely range of dates for such a [crewed lunar landing] mission from 2028 to 2032. ”

China has stated that it will put humans on the moon by 2030. I believe it very likely they will achieve that. As that year approaches, pressure on NASA will grow to land first; or to put it another way, some US politicians will drive increasing political hysteria over “losing the Moon to China”. There will almost certainly be major modifications to the current Artemis mission plans because at this point they are not moving forward at the pace necessary to be first.

The good news is that, with the success of IFT-4, Starship launch cadence looks set to increase significantly. I think we are going to see remarkable progress from SpaceX.