Updates Artemis Program Updates & Discussions

jedidia said:
So the thing is only flying for the second time ever, and they're going to put 4 people in it already? That seems an uncharacteristic risk for Nasa...
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With a flawed heat shield...
GLS said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1864735692900696118
https://twitter.com/x/status/1864843461905518866

"We have since determined that while the capsule was dipping in and out of the atmosphere, as part of that planned skip entry, heat accumulated inside the heat shield outer layer, leading to gases forming and becoming trapped inside the heat shield," said Pam Melroy, NASA's deputy administrator. "This caused internal pressure to build up and led to cracking and uneven shedding of that outer layer."

Interesting 🤔
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Soooo... they have a heatshield that showed problems, they're compensating for that by trajectory changes, and now they're putting people in it without ever having flown those changes for real? Yeah, that doesn't sound so great...
 
jedidia said:
Soooo... they have a heatshield that showed problems, they're compensating for that by trajectory changes, and now they're putting people in it without ever having flown those changes for real? Yeah, that doesn't sound so great...
Click to expand...
Hey now, don't be pessimistic! NASA flew the shuttles for years experiencing foam damage on the TPS on almost every flight. What could go wrong? /s
 
I read on the NASA site, they claimed in half a years time, they'd fly the crewed mission to the moon.

But this mention of the heat sheild, it is one mission, but the distance and speed, is quite high. If they knew better to orientate on re-entry, do they have a point. Will the crew be fine with that.

I didn't expect to read the mission happening that soon.
 
I really wonder if the current regime will simply fold up NASA altogether. They hate NASA's science efforts and hate space race "losers".
 
Lego, rocket edition:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1965083849526030393

the House Appropriations Bill calls for the space agency to "evaluate alternatives" to the Exploration Upper Stage.
One of these, as Ars reported last year, is the Centaur V upper stage built by United Launch Alliance, which is already flight-proven. Another option is a "short" version of the upper stage Blue Origin currently flies on its New Glenn rocket. Sources indicated that Blue has already begun work on a modified version of the stage that could fit within the shroud of the SLS rocket. This smaller version of the stage, like the Centaur V, would allow NASA to continue launching the SLS rocket using the existing launch tower in Florida


https://twitter.com/x/status/1965141937931120910
 
GLS said:
Lego, rocket edition:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1965083849526030393

the House Appropriations Bill calls for the space agency to "evaluate alternatives" to the Exploration Upper Stage.
One of these, as Ars reported last year, is the Centaur V upper stage built by United Launch Alliance, which is already flight-proven. Another option is a "short" version of the upper stage Blue Origin currently flies on its New Glenn rocket. Sources indicated that Blue has already begun work on a modified version of the stage that could fit within the shroud of the SLS rocket. This smaller version of the stage, like the Centaur V, would allow NASA to continue launching the SLS rocket using the existing launch tower in Florida


https://twitter.com/x/status/1965141937931120910
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Starship Blue Moon Orion Frankenstein's Monster?
1) Now there's an addon idea
2) A lot of people in different groups are gonna stroke out at that one

Tim might be underestimating human-rating this whole contraption though.

Although, hypothetically let's say they work something up and beat China just for the sake of beating China (which, if I'm honest, I couldn't care less who gets there first, but sure, geopolitics), what are the odds the money people go "ok, we made it, we can unpucker now. Alright, cancel the rest"? (whatever "the rest" even looks like at that point)

I suppose BO would be left with a working lander, Starship would continue on its path, and something more could be made of the Moon independently, but I mean, one of those is deadset on Mars and the other hasn't shown much interest on the Moon without a government contract, to my knowledge. So we just leave it at Apollo 11 2: Electric Boogaloo?
 
Duffy said:
US is going back to the moon before President Trump leaves office.
Click to expand...

Unless 79-year-old Trump is planning to become a Futurama-style Head of State with his head kept alive in a jar, there is no way this will be the order of events, even if he achieves his dream of being president for life.

We've been repeatedly designing, building, scrapping, and revising moon mission architectures for over 20 years, and basically got an Apollo 8 redux for the effort. Now they want to turn the whole thing over again and axe the upper stage to reduce costs. At this point such a major redesign and rebuild will likely cost them far more than $4B and it's not getting boots on the Moon in three years, or even a decade. And honestly, there is no real motivation for us to go again other than anti-Asian racism and "patriotic" dick-waving.

I normally like Everyday Astronaut but I think he's crazy if he thinks that some disposable unholy amalgamation of SpaceX Starship / Blue Origin's lander and an Orion capsule being the cherry on the dung heap is a feasible architecture from any standpoint, engineering, political, fiscal, or otherwise. Trump hates Musk, Musk and Bezos are competitors and hate each other, and the makers of the Orion capsule and service module don't want anything to do with any of these clowns. The best outcome of such a project would be if they all aced themselves with a Nedelin-style pad explosion.

I think it's pretty much foregone that China will be on the moon before the U.S. returns, if we ever do, which I frankly doubt. China has its act together and is working smartly toward this goal. America has a lot of massive structural problems down here on Earth's surface that are certain to disrupt our society in the next several years, and we're not going to the moon when the future of our nation is in question. We're just going to crumble at the bottom of Earth's gravity well just like Russia.
 
Thunder Chicken said:
I normally like Everyday Astronaut but I think he's crazy if he thinks that some disposable unholy amalgamation of SpaceX Starship / Blue Origin's lander and an Orion capsule being the cherry on the dung heap is a feasible architecture from any standpoint, engineering, political, fiscal, or otherwise. Trump hates Musk, Musk and Bezos are competitors and hate each other, and the makers of the Orion capsule and service module don't want anything to do with any of these clowns. The best outcome of such a project would be if they all aced themselves with a Nedelin-style pad explosion.
Click to expand...

That constellation is not too different to Apollos contractors though. And most of them don't exist anymore....
 
https://twitter.com/x/status/1966248962202943799


(Ultimate arm chair engineer warning, long but hear me out)

Artemis is a mess. I've been working on a very deep dive going over all possible options to get humans on the moon with existing (and near future existing) hardware and I've discovered something quite interesting about the current plans for Starship HLS.

Starship HLS should ABSOLUTELY not do it's own Trans Lunar Injection. SpaceX should do a "stubby" HLS which only has enough propellant to get from NRHO down to the surface and back. This only requires about 400 tonnes of propellant because you could remove something like 20 or 25 TONNES of tankage that is currently baked into the design that's ONLY used ONCE to do the TLI.

A stubby Starship HLS now has MUCH greater margins too, almost 700 m/s of dV for a round trip between NRHO and the lunar surface. This also means its refueling requires substantially less propellant for the subsequent missions. It makes the refueling trans lunar tanker require much less propellant, which means it requires fewer launches to fuel that up as well. It all works towards much fewer launches all together, a much more efficient lunar lander that isn't carrying around an additional 25 tonnes of dry mass, a shorter vehicle which requires less hardware for the elevator, a lower center of gravity, much lower landed mass since it requires less propellant to get back to NRHO etc etc. It's a win : win.

The only drawbacks I've found so far is the trans lunar tanker and HLS would need to be able to dock nose to nose and have heavy bracing to be able to perform the TLI docked with the Trans Lunar Depot, however this would certainly be less mass than the 25 tonnes of parasitic tankage we've removed.

The other drawback is a trans lunar refuel depot that has minimal dry mass (and therefore only 2 Rap Vacs) would likely need to expend a booster to be able to get into orbit initially since it would take about 19 minutes for two Raptors to burn through 1,600 tonnes of prop, so you'd have to launch it with less than 600 tonnes of prop which still gives it enough dV to get into orbit if the booster is expended, but also can get the job done with just two Raptor Vacuums, would be be most efficient for all trans lunar refueling operations. BUT, THIS IS TRUE OF THE FULL HLS AS WELL!

The numbers BARELY close with little margin for error and boil-off with a full height HLS doing its own TLI. A stubby HLS is almost the only real viable option that has much greater margins and requires far less to refuel once its at the moon.

Best of all, cargo and crew volume remain the same for a stubby HLS Starship. There's almost no compromise other than the complication of having to do the TLI with two docked vehicles. Something that's never been done before, but certainly the juice is worth the squeeze over having an inherently inefficient lunar lander.

I'm working on a very in depth deep dive on all things Artemis and this is just something that stood out. I can't wait to show you my full rundown. There's some interesting options out there that can help ensure the US beats China back to the moon while also aligning with long term sustainability goals.

What're your thoughts @elonmusk?
 
https://twitter.com/x/status/1973724698853965879

A nice historical overview, but there are some interesting bits for the future:

Perhaps the biggest hurdle is the complexity of the mission. To fully fuel a Starship in low-Earth orbit to land on the Moon and take off would require multiple Starship "tanker" launches from Earth. No one can quite say how many because SpaceX is still working to increase the payload capacity of Starship, and no one has real-world data on transfer efficiency and propellant boiloff. But the number is probably at least a dozen missions. One senior source recently suggested to Ars that it may be as many as 20 to 40 launches.


The answer is Blue Origin's Mark 1 lander.
The company has finished assembly of the first Mark 1 lander and will soon ship it from Florida to Johnson Space Center in Houston for vacuum chamber testing. A pathfinder mission is scheduled to launch in early 2026. It will be the largest vehicle to ever land on the Moon. It is not rated for humans, however. It was designed as a cargo lander.

Ars can now report, based on government sources, that Blue Origin has begun preliminary work on a modified version of the Mark 1 lander—leveraging learnings from Mark 2 crew development—that could be part of an architecture to land humans on the Moon this decade. NASA has not formally requested Blue Origin to work on this technology, but according to a space agency official, the company recognizes the urgency of the need.
How would it work? Blue Origin is still architecting the mission, but it would involve "multiple" Mark 1 landers to carry crew down to the lunar surface and then ascend back up to lunar orbit to rendezvous with the Orion spacecraft. Enough work has been done, according to the official, that Blue Origin engineers are confident the approach could work. Critically, it would not require any refueling.
 
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