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There is no Cold War to beat the Soviets back to the moon.  The only,  and I mean ONLY,  reason to go back is to put a couple of women on the surface for a SJW history moment.

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This went predictably sideways.

I hope we get back to the moon. I have serious doubts that SLS will be the rocket that does it, at least not on the regular. Orion - maybe, but flung by a different launcher.

My guess is that the gateway will be built, the landers will be built, and some kind of as-yet unthought of shuttle will be built to move people from LEO to the gateway. That shuttle very well might be a SpaceX Starship (or fueled by a Starship). Even if you don't think they'll man-rate it anytime soon (and I understand that argument, and don't totally disagree), the idea that a Starship could be shuttling between LEO and the gateway is not farfetched. Personnel can be moved to the ISS (or straight to the shuttle) via Dragon/Falcon 9. That shuttle need never deorbit, or at least need never deorbit with passengers onboard.

The problem with the whole SLS concept is that you don't need to throw everything to the moon in one shot; not when you have cheaper commercial launchers that can do the same thing, and you've already acknowledged that you're going to build Gateway to make it all work. Constellation acknowledged this, launching people on Ares 1 and stuff with Ares V. You just no longer need what SLS has to offer; even without Starship (or New Glenn, Blue Origin may yet have something to say about this) Falcon Heavy can toss everything you need to go to the Moon, and at much less cost, even if you have to use an extra launch for some of the really big loads. Thus, eventually, SLS will be cancelled or retired.

I have a post on SLS/Constellation/SpaceX over in the Starship thread; it's a bajillion words long and I'm not going to copy it here.

One thought experiment to add... Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy's performance to places like Mars or the moon is somewhat limited by the Merlin engines somewhat mediocre specific impulse. This is (fairly) easily solved with a new upper stage. While probably not viable on a reusable Falcon 9; if you expended the center core on a Falcon Heavy; it should be pretty easy to launch something powered by an RL10* and give you much better performance to places outside LEO. (The RL10, while it has great Isp, doesn't have the thrust to do what the upper stage on a F9 does very well. By expending the center core on a FH, you could push that second stage high enough that it doesn't have to). Alternatively, you could make it a 3-stage rocket, though that might mean a new center core on FH. My point is, F9/FH have room to evolve further if Elon had a compelling reason to do it. He doesn't, because he thinks Starship will obsolete F9/FH. But if Starship were to get stuck in development hell or go the way of the Dodo, those options could start to look better.

*-IIRC, SpaceX took some GOV money to sketch out what a Cryogenic upper stage for Falcon 9 would look like, so this might not be as far off as you might think.

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Maybe, maybe not.  Apollo plans were to get a man on the moon and returning him in one piece.  Not conduct a bunch of experiments,  just pick up some rocks as proof.  As things developed, certain limited science packages were designed and a methodical geology collection specified.  

For full scale mining of lunar resources?  Not worth the cost for Helium 3 or any other mineral.   The moon is a fucking dangerous place for an EVA suit.  Cernan wore off the rubber coating of the geology hammer by the end of his last walk on A17.  

With our gov spending money on stupid shit, we are lucky to see a Mars lander once in a while

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I think this is a great idea.

Starliner/dragon to orbit. Massive shuttles linked together and delivered to orbit separately from humans.

That’s the only solution to SLS until starships “crazy Elon” is human capable.

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I think this is a great idea.

Starliner/dragon to orbit. Massive shuttles linked together and delivered to orbit separately from humans.

That’s the only solution to SLS until starships “crazy Elon” is human capable.

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People forget that the “2001: A Space Odyssey” movie showed an orbiting nuclear weapons platform above the earth early in the movie.     Heinlein also describes the basic concept very well in “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”

People got this back in the 60s.  With China starting to emerge as a global power, it’s time.  

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People forget that the “2001: A Space Odyssey” movie showed an orbiting nuclear weapons platform above the earth early in the movie.     Heinlein also describes the basic concept very well in “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”

People got this back in the 60s.  With China starting to emerge as a global power, it’s time.  

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There is no Cold War to beat the Soviets back to the moon.  The only,  and I mean ONLY,  reason to go back is to put a couple of women on the surface for a SJW history moment.

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The SLS is a fucking joke. NASA is far better off buying the use of BETTER rockets from Bezos and Musk.

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What are you saying?? It’s an entirely different approach. If you think spacex will put humans on the first crew rated ship you will be wrong. If you think SpaceX is for not in “test 1000 times until perfection” mode you are wrong. They are test and blow up mode. Even the F9 landings aren’t reliable enough 6 years later and they NEVER have to go through orbital Re-entry.

The shuttle was an over built glider plane. All it had to do was withstand re entry.


Not a propulsive “Crazy Elon” flip lander that has already failed.

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The complaints that SpaceX “failed” to land starship three times, and therefore it must be dumb, are hilarious.

They failed to land a Falcon 9 core/booster a LOT more times than that, until they figured it out ... and now it’s become a routine and standard thing ... and now they are eating everyone else’s lunch.  Yeah, so dumb.  


I am sure Boeing and ULA and all the other “old space” gov contractors were laughing and patting themselves on the back every time SpaceX failed to land a Falcon 9 core.  It’s like horse/buggy sellers laughing every time a Model T crashed.  Who do we think is going to be laughing 30 years from now?

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Also of note.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IijMSgCZV_4

Whenever you have NASA administrators straight up calling the program congressional pork and socialism in a mainstream media story...

Once we are on the Moon in a big way humanity changes forever. There will be a deluge of advances that will render much of our current society obsolescent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGcvv3683Os

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Exactly.

People who constantly make excuses for NASA and the big contractors like Boeing just want to completely ignore the basic maths and costs involved,

SLS will literally THROW AWAY the cost of four Falcon heavy launches, just in the engines they are discarding after each launch.  And thats just ONE PIECE of the bloated cost of an SLS launch.  Over half a billion dollars in hardware that’s just thrown away, each launch.

As I already said, NASA simply cannot afford SLS.  It eats way too much of their budget with each launch.  If NASA insists on going to the moon with SLS I honestly think they will be committing suicide, and it will be the end of the agency as we know it - which would be fucking tragic.    

Sure, Starship  is VERY far away from every being man-rated, but the entire fucking point of the development is that someone finally said “Wait, why are we throwing away all his hardware and money each launch?  That’s stupid.  Let’s find a better way”

SLS defenders who say stuff like “oh, but they might be able to get the cost down to a billion per launch instead of two billion” are completely and utterly missing the point.  

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theyll try because china, russia, and mostly spacex are nipping at their heels.


Spacex in a way is a existential threat to NASA. They can either jump on the train or let it run over them.

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I think this is a great idea.

Starliner/dragon to orbit. Massive shuttles linked together and delivered to orbit separately from humans.

That’s the only solution to SLS until starships “crazy Elon” is human capable.

Quoted:Ya'll excited? This millenial who only got to see 15 years old Shuttles launch is ecstatic.

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Also, let’s all be honest about what the purpose of Artemis is.  It’s to put a black or Hispanic woman on the moon, so we can virtue signal to everyone in the world how progressive and non-racist we are.

That’s it.  That’s what the entire mission has turned into now.  

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Elon Musk will be fine without NASAs boondoggles and massive transfers of taxpayer funds to Boeing and other government contractors.

This mission literally makes no difference.  Artemis is trying to replicate something we did 50 years ago, partly using a bunch of left-over parts sitting in warehouses from a discontinued (and arguably failed) program, with no serious or real plans for any follow-up or new development or innovative technologies.  

NASA is not building a moon base, or going to Mars.  As such, how does SLS or Artemis “help” anyone else build a base, or infrastructure or anything else?  Nobody who is actually going to build anything on the Moon or Mars is going to use any technology from SLS.  It’s nothing but a giant and stubborn waste of taxpayer money.

None of what you (and I) are hoping for will happen as a result of anything NASA does.  It’s sad to admit, but it’s the truth.  

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The only killer in sight is the possibility that literally nobody will want* to pay for a full Lunar Base and then Lunar Colony.  Musk, at least, seems to think (and, I assume, he has the folks at SpaceX do the research to support it) that there's an economic case for a colony on Mars to be economically attractive (i.e. not a horrendous money sink, even if there's no net-revenue).

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There are a pile of problems with space residence... Namely biology... There are some advantages to the moon, or even mars (only real disadvantage is the dV and time to get there) versus sitting in LEO. There are some resources either place, and the main thing is a lower gravity well to get "wherever else". If you can make fuel either place you are GTG, if you can find resources that are cheaper to extract either place you are golden at least long term. The main issue is who fronts enough cash to make either one an actual self sustaining proposition. If you need a 25mil launch per month to keep it running, it best be returning 25mil+1 dollar per month to make it work long term.

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And this is why the forward-looking SpaceX fans are so strongly focused on SS and SpaceX as the sole meaningful hope.

If Elon's plan to achieve global satellite ISP dominance comes to fruition, and right now it certainly appears to have the best chance by far of doing so compared to the other competitors, it will unlock a staggeringly huge revenue stream.

A revenue stream that's going to be going into a privately held corporation that has no mandate to pay back shareholders, only to continue funding Elon's Mars goal. At that point, they could be burning hundreds of millions a month with zero return, and it wouldn't matter. He's essentially trying to bootstrap his own self-funded space agency, and right now it looks pretty damn likely that he's going to succeed in the 2020s.

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Spacex, China, and Russia aren't nipping at NASA or SLS heels. They are actually going places and doing things.

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lot's to look at.  

good stuff.

thanks OP

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Why do you keep mocking the "Crazy Elon"? It's worked. SLS keeps gathering dust, while Elon is actually doing stuff.

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Elon Musk will be fine without NASAs boondoggles and massive transfers of taxpayer funds to Boeing and other government contractors.

This mission literally makes no difference.  Artemis is trying to replicate something we did 50 years ago, partly using a bunch of left-over parts sitting in warehouses from a discontinued (and arguably failed) program, with no serious or real plans for any follow-up or new development or innovative technologies.  

NASA is not building a moon base, or going to Mars.  As such, how does SLS or Artemis “help” anyone else build a base, or infrastructure or anything else?  Nobody who is actually going to build anything on the Moon or Mars is going to use any technology from SLS.  It’s nothing but a giant and stubborn waste of taxpayer money.

None of what you (and I) are hoping for will happen as a result of anything NASA does.  It’s sad to admit, but it’s the truth.  

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In another way of thinking about it, SLS is actually the existential threat to NASA.  SpaceX will be NASA’s savior, if they allow it.

Even NASA doesn’t want SLS.  NASA finally convinced Congress to let them use anything other than SLS for the Europa Clipper mission.  Think about that for a second:  NASA had to beg Congress to let them use something other than the NASA rocket for a launch.  

I think SLS will have one test launch, and then MIGHT do the moon fly-by, just to “prove” a point ... and then SLS will be quietly put in the sad dusty museums where NASA celebrates the past.  With a per-launch cost of close to 2 billion dollars, NASA literally cannot afford to go to the moon with SLS.  It was a kinda bad idea, that has gradually turned into a completely insane idea, given the advances in the industry and the completely out of control costs.

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Wonder what the parking lot at Boeing (or Marshall) looks like tonight....

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What do you mean?

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Yikes.  Someone actually put that sentence on paper?   Like they believed it?